From: hbrooks@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu (Harold_Brooks)
Subject: Re: Blue Jays-Gillick
Organization: NSSL
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:24:09 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...
>
>>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. 

So, Rance Mulliniks and Al Leiter were just as important to the Jays success 
as Robby Alomar and Juan Guzman.  And you would rather have had Doug Linton
on the Blue Jays in '92 than Roger Clemens.  You're entitled to your opinion
on the value of players, but I don't think very many people will share these.

>
>>It is a stupid statement because it says nothing of interest.  Was
>
>What says "nothing of interest" is comparing one player in a hypothetical
>situation to another.  Much was said this fall about how Abbott would have
>done in Jack Morris' shoes.  This is absurd.  It is impossible and 
>therefore has no relevance to baseball in the real world.  You cannot
>isolate the contribution of any one player to the team effort because you
>don't know the complete extent of that players contribution.  What is really
>silly is when you attempt to sum the isolated contributions to get the 
>total measure of a team's quality.  You have just compounded your original
>error by 25 (the number of players).
>
>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.
>

So, we can only make comments about things that happened in the past and,
even then, only about the completely objective aspects of the game.  
This makes an odd juxtaposition with what I thought was your previously-
stated belief that we can use only our subjective views of players'
performance (at least for defense, objectivity is fine for offense).
Some people are interested in making intelligent predictions about what 
will happen in the future.  It seems that you're happier having everything
in baseball will be a complete and total surprise to you.  Not being able
to form any opinions about the quality of players and teams before the 
season is completely over seems strange.

Harold
-- 
Harold Brooks                    hbrooks@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu
National Severe Storms Laboratory (Norman, OK)
"Better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late."
--Branch Rickey