In article <1993Apr20.025331.17413@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca> maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Roger Maynard) writes: > >Not at all.  I am talking about Morris winning with Toronto last year.  You  >are about to launch into a fantasy about the "Red Jays" and how Toronto >would have done with Viola on their team.  Viola didn't play for Toronto  >last year.  Morris did. > The problem with your nihilistic approach, Roger, is that it takes all the sense out of the game.  By your line of reasoning, if a guy hits into a double play with one out and the bases loaded, there's no point in saying that that was a bad thing to do (if his team won anyway) or speculating on what might have happened if things had gone otherwise, so the double play is merely an event that happened in the course of a game that was eventually won or lost for unknown reasons.  After all, any speculation involves constructing a fantasy about what would have happened but didn't.  Roger, do you ever worry that the next pencil you drop will fall to the ceiling instead?  Or are you willing to consider empirical evidence?  Teams go to the post-season when they win more games than anybody else in their division.  If they don't make the post-season, they don't win the Series.  Will you agree that winning a division is a useful intermediate goal in ring-collecting?  If so, you must agree that winning games is a useful intermediate goal towards winning the division, and our disagreements come when we consider how to win games.  In your viewpoint as expressed, winning games happens for reasons that cannot be analyzed.  While many of us are thinking things like "Base- runners are good, outs are bad, and therefore walks are better than double plays with the bases loaded", you are thinking things like "It's a team game, so perhaps the double play will cause some mysterious team dynamics that will cause the team to win today".  The result is that it becomes impossible to say *anything* about individual players.  Perhaps Atlanta would have won the Series with me playing left field.  After all, perhaps in some way my knowledge and personality would have helped the team more than my complete lack of skill would have hurt it.  Therefore, I could be an extremely valuable player.  Did Dave Winfield have anything to do with the Jays' victory?  Probably, but how do you know? If you replace him with Andres Galarraga, perhaps the Jays would have won, perhaps they would have lost, perhaps they would have defected to Alpha Centauri (bearing in mind that the flying saucers would not have landed in mid-season had Winfield been DHing for Toronto).  Was Babe Ruth a good player?  He played on some WS-winning teams, but did he have anything to do with their success?  It is generally accepted that Ernie Banks was a good baseball player, and Jarvis Brown and Dan Schatzeder weren't.  It seems to me that anybody who would deny this needs to provide the proof.  Now, we have observed things about baseball over the years, both empirically and by looking at the rulebook.  It is necessary to score more runs than one's opponent to win the game, so it would seem important to score runs and to prevent one's opponent from scoring.  Runs are scored while a team is batting, and an inning ends after the third out, so it would seem that making outs is bad while hitting home runs is good.  Players have tendencies to hit or pitch at certain levels, and these are usually somewhat consistent from year to year.  We do use these statistics to predict winners, and so do you.  To make some flat predictions:  Barry Bonds will have a higher OBP+SLG than Gene Larkin this year.  The Braves will finish ahead of the Rockies in the standings.  The Tigers will score more runs than the Royals, but will also give up more.  I would be astonished if any of these turned out to be false, and, I suspect, so would you.  As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure I can predict all the division winners this year, given 3-4 guesses per division, and this is certainly better than random chance (and almost statistically significant).  If you will admit that the Rockies and Mariners are unlikely to meet in the World Series, you must admit that there is some sort of way to measure likelihoods, however fuzzy. > >It is impossible for all other things to be equal so your fantasy is totally >meaningless. > So how about "real life"?  Person A robs a service station with two people in it, using a .38 automatic pistol, gets $42, and is convicted and sentenced for three years.  Person B, with a similar criminal record, robs a service station with two people in it, using a .38 revolver, gets $42, and is convicted.  Since they used two different types of handgun, are comparisons totally meaningless?  Say you drop a pencil to see if the gravity still works (my cats are always testing this - they don't trust me to pay the gravity bill on time).  You have never dropped a pencil at that exact time of the century before, so all previous evidence is meaningless?  Or would you be surprised if it flew out the window instead of hitting the desk?