Last summer, the Supreme Court decided the hideously-named Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that the Constitution protects what we on the left these days call marriage equality, i.e. that state laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman are unconstitutional. And... what with one thing and another I just never really got around to reading the case. Not the majority opinion, not the dissents. I heard some things about it. I heard that Kennedy did a lot of pronouncing about how wonderful marriage is, including a final paragraph the reading of which has apparently become a fixture at weddings. I heard that, as usual in these sorts of cases, his doctrinal analysis was a mess, and (as in Lawrence v. Texas) he was kind of unclear about whether this was an equal protection case or a "substantive due process" a.k.a. fundamental rights case. I heard that Chief Justice Roberts's opinion was far more fire-breathing culture warrior than I had been expecting after his curious dissent in U.S. v. Windsor. But I didn't read it for myself. Between those few snippets and my knowledge of Kennedy's previous gay rights jurisprudence I figured I had a decent kind of idea what the opinion said, and while it left a lot to be desired (aside from, y'know, deciding the case correctly), it had some interesting, maybe even promising stuff going on.
Well I just actually read the damn thing, and oh my god it sucks. It's waaaaaaaaaay worse than I had been imagining. First of all, about half the opinion isn't legal analysis at all, it's Anthony Kennedy Tells The Story of Marriage And How Wonderful It Is. Which first of all is just weird and kinda gross to read in the U.S. Reports. It's like Scalia's dissent in U.S. v. Virginia, the VMI case, where he includes the full text of the Virginia Military Institute's Code of a Gentleman at the end. This is just not something that belongs in a judicial opinion, not like this anyway. (As I'll note later, there could be a place for a little bit of this sort of thing in a better-crafted opinion, but Kennedy massively overdoses us on it.) Second, while there's some nice stuff in what he says, particularly the bits about how the changes that have been made to the institution of marriage over the centuries as women have achieved greater and greater social progress have strengthened and improved marriage, a lot of it is kind of gross on its own terms. He goes on and on about how wonderful marriage is, how it's a bond unlike any other, so ennobling, it's at the heart of human civilization, blah blah blah, and then he's like, hey isn't it great how these gay people love marriage as much as I do! They want in to our patriarchal (if slightly less than it used to be) institution, hooray!!! He literally goes so far as to say that "Were their intent to demean the revered idea and reality of marriage, the petitioners' claims would be of a different order." WTF, bro.
Showing posts with label 2015. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2015. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2016
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
In Defense of Cautious Football Coaches.
FiveThirtyEight is on a crusade. Well, I guess they're just one of many people on this particular crusade, but since I'm not a football fan they're most of where I encounter it. Specifically it's the crusade to get football coaches to be less conservative in their decision-making about things like punting or going for it on 4th down. Or about two-point conversations. They've got another piece today, arguing that a couple of NFL coaches who made ill-fated decisions in this weekend's playoff games had committed "crimes against middle-school math." This is basically because, in certain situations, you can show using simple math that going for two-point conversations after touchdowns is the correct call by win expectancy, even when failing to convert would mean falling one point short. Roughly speaking that's because you often lose in overtime; to a first approximation it's a 50/50 shot, and if you're on the road it's a lot worse than that. So if you're a road team with something approaching a 50% chance of making your two-point conversion when it would win you the game outright, it's better to go for it.
But I feel like this is missing something: maybe the goal isn't always to maximize win expectancy. This is perhaps the most radical idea in all of sports. Maybe it's even more radical than the whole "maybe we shouldn't really be playing football at all, guys" thing. It's close, anyway. Well, there's a category of things called "sportsmanship," I guess, where it's routine not to maximize win expectancy. But I'm talking more broadly than that. Maybe we care about things other than just the end-of-the-day result. My hypothesized other value in this context is that losing now and losing later are different things. The 538 calculations implicitly treat them as the same, and indeed, one week later they have awfully similar consequences. But it's possible, isn't it, that they're not really the same. And if losing later is better than losing now, then you get something out of the cautious, "wrong" decisions the 538 people inveigh against in exchange for those points of Win Expectancy. You get to keep playing. You get hope, at least a few more minutes of it. Maybe, sometimes, that's worth it.
Now, I don't know anything about football, really, but I do know baseball, and I know that I always breathe an immense sigh of relief whenever the Mets tie up a game. The difference between one run down and a tie is, to me, the most emotionally significant one there is late in games, because it means you're not losing. It means something has to go wrong in order for the game to end with a bad result. Of course, something might go wrong, and if you're not leading then you need something to go right before something goes wrong. (Against the Royals in the World Series, for instance, that felt juts about impossible.) But, phew, not losing is a wonderful feeling. It's the feeling of, okay, we were down 8-1, maybe, but we've just put up a six-run inning--but that seventh run, that's what makes it mean something. That's a multitude of sins washed away; that's a fresh start to the ballgame. The go-ahead run can seem almost unimportant in comparison, even though it's not, really.
Now, baseball isn't football. There's rarely a situation that calls for a genuine strategic choice here, although for what it's worth, in the late innings, if I'm down a run and have a chance to sacrifice-bunt a runner over to third base with one out, I'm gonna do that more often than not, even though it's at best a neutral move from a win probability standpoint, because I'd rather attain that wonderful status of not losing now and worry about the actual winning part later than go for broke now and fail. But maybe similar concerns aren't really felt by football fans. And maybe the immense awesomeness of winning now by going for that two-point conversion with seconds left in the fourth quarter would outweigh them, if ever anyone would try to do it. But the point, really, is just that it's a little too simple to do the win probability analysis and call it a day. There might be things besides just who wins and who loses at the end of the day that matters.
The Mets lost the World Series. They lost it despite having led in the late innings of four of five games; they could almost as easily have won the series in five games. And in Game 5, Matt Harvey was pitching the game of his life. For eight innings. Eight glorious, shut-out, five-hit innings. With nine strikeouts. But then came the ninth inning. The team was up 2-0, Harvey had thrown 102 pitches, and the Mets had Jeurys Familia, ace closer, waiting in the bullpen. Terry Collins brought Harvey back out to start the ninth. He walked Lorenzo Cain, I believe after a few close calls that he maybe should've had. Then Cain stole second and Eric Hosmer doubled. Familia came in and got three ground-ball outs, and indeed, had Lucas Duda made a routine throw home on the second of them, the game would've ended. But he missed, and Hosmer scored, and the Royals went on to beat up Addison Reed and Bartolo Colon in the 12th to claim the Series.
It's easy to criticize Terry Collins there for making the wrong move. And maybe, in a pure win-maximization sense, he did. But Mike Francesa did a segment about it the next day, plus or minus a weekend or two, and said, look. Collins chose to trust his player. He put his faith in Matt Harvey, who had pitched lights-out with all his heart that day. And it backfired. But isn't that what sports is all about? We're here to see great players do incredible things, are we not? Matt Harvey completing that game would have been legendary. (To my mind, the first eight innings still deserve to be legendary; they sure were amazing to watch.) Isn't it a better world where managers will put their faith in their greatest players and give them the chance to do incredible things, even when that doesn't make the most sense, then where they meticulously hew to what some probability chart tells them about optimal strategy?
I found that segment incredibly moving, and it helped me find a real sense of peace about the fact that the Mets lost the Series. Now, I still don't think I agree with Collins' managing: I would absolutely have brought Harvey back out for the ninth, but the leash would have been precisely one baserunner. After that first walk I would absolutely have brought Familia in, no questions asked. That, to me, would have struck the right balance between putting your faith in your player and still also doing what's necessary to win. But Francesa helped me remember that it isn't, it shouldn't be, all about winning. That way lies becoming the Yankees. Sports, ultimately, is entertainment, and we should play the game in a way that's fun, even if that sometimes means losing when we could have won. There are worse fates.
I don't know if this is what's going on in these football contexts, but I wish the public discourse on the issue would at least consider the possibility.
But I feel like this is missing something: maybe the goal isn't always to maximize win expectancy. This is perhaps the most radical idea in all of sports. Maybe it's even more radical than the whole "maybe we shouldn't really be playing football at all, guys" thing. It's close, anyway. Well, there's a category of things called "sportsmanship," I guess, where it's routine not to maximize win expectancy. But I'm talking more broadly than that. Maybe we care about things other than just the end-of-the-day result. My hypothesized other value in this context is that losing now and losing later are different things. The 538 calculations implicitly treat them as the same, and indeed, one week later they have awfully similar consequences. But it's possible, isn't it, that they're not really the same. And if losing later is better than losing now, then you get something out of the cautious, "wrong" decisions the 538 people inveigh against in exchange for those points of Win Expectancy. You get to keep playing. You get hope, at least a few more minutes of it. Maybe, sometimes, that's worth it.
Now, I don't know anything about football, really, but I do know baseball, and I know that I always breathe an immense sigh of relief whenever the Mets tie up a game. The difference between one run down and a tie is, to me, the most emotionally significant one there is late in games, because it means you're not losing. It means something has to go wrong in order for the game to end with a bad result. Of course, something might go wrong, and if you're not leading then you need something to go right before something goes wrong. (Against the Royals in the World Series, for instance, that felt juts about impossible.) But, phew, not losing is a wonderful feeling. It's the feeling of, okay, we were down 8-1, maybe, but we've just put up a six-run inning--but that seventh run, that's what makes it mean something. That's a multitude of sins washed away; that's a fresh start to the ballgame. The go-ahead run can seem almost unimportant in comparison, even though it's not, really.
Now, baseball isn't football. There's rarely a situation that calls for a genuine strategic choice here, although for what it's worth, in the late innings, if I'm down a run and have a chance to sacrifice-bunt a runner over to third base with one out, I'm gonna do that more often than not, even though it's at best a neutral move from a win probability standpoint, because I'd rather attain that wonderful status of not losing now and worry about the actual winning part later than go for broke now and fail. But maybe similar concerns aren't really felt by football fans. And maybe the immense awesomeness of winning now by going for that two-point conversion with seconds left in the fourth quarter would outweigh them, if ever anyone would try to do it. But the point, really, is just that it's a little too simple to do the win probability analysis and call it a day. There might be things besides just who wins and who loses at the end of the day that matters.
The Mets lost the World Series. They lost it despite having led in the late innings of four of five games; they could almost as easily have won the series in five games. And in Game 5, Matt Harvey was pitching the game of his life. For eight innings. Eight glorious, shut-out, five-hit innings. With nine strikeouts. But then came the ninth inning. The team was up 2-0, Harvey had thrown 102 pitches, and the Mets had Jeurys Familia, ace closer, waiting in the bullpen. Terry Collins brought Harvey back out to start the ninth. He walked Lorenzo Cain, I believe after a few close calls that he maybe should've had. Then Cain stole second and Eric Hosmer doubled. Familia came in and got three ground-ball outs, and indeed, had Lucas Duda made a routine throw home on the second of them, the game would've ended. But he missed, and Hosmer scored, and the Royals went on to beat up Addison Reed and Bartolo Colon in the 12th to claim the Series.
It's easy to criticize Terry Collins there for making the wrong move. And maybe, in a pure win-maximization sense, he did. But Mike Francesa did a segment about it the next day, plus or minus a weekend or two, and said, look. Collins chose to trust his player. He put his faith in Matt Harvey, who had pitched lights-out with all his heart that day. And it backfired. But isn't that what sports is all about? We're here to see great players do incredible things, are we not? Matt Harvey completing that game would have been legendary. (To my mind, the first eight innings still deserve to be legendary; they sure were amazing to watch.) Isn't it a better world where managers will put their faith in their greatest players and give them the chance to do incredible things, even when that doesn't make the most sense, then where they meticulously hew to what some probability chart tells them about optimal strategy?
I found that segment incredibly moving, and it helped me find a real sense of peace about the fact that the Mets lost the Series. Now, I still don't think I agree with Collins' managing: I would absolutely have brought Harvey back out for the ninth, but the leash would have been precisely one baserunner. After that first walk I would absolutely have brought Familia in, no questions asked. That, to me, would have struck the right balance between putting your faith in your player and still also doing what's necessary to win. But Francesa helped me remember that it isn't, it shouldn't be, all about winning. That way lies becoming the Yankees. Sports, ultimately, is entertainment, and we should play the game in a way that's fun, even if that sometimes means losing when we could have won. There are worse fates.
I don't know if this is what's going on in these football contexts, but I wish the public discourse on the issue would at least consider the possibility.
Monday, October 19, 2015
On Matt Harvey and Steroids
Steroids! They're bad, right? They're "performance-enhancing drugs," and the people who use PEDs are cheaters who should be suspended for lengthy periods of time, possibly given lifetime bans, and certainly not voted into the Hall of Fame even if they did flat-out goofy things at the plate like getting on base more than half the time over a four-year span while drawing more intentional walks than strikeouts. (Yeah.)
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Intent and Utley
So. The Mets just lost the second game of the National League Championship Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The critical moment of the game came in the 7th inning. The Mets led 2-1, but the Dodgers had a runner at second when Chase Utley came in to pinch-hit against Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard was clearly tiring, and Utley managed to get just enough bat on a low change-up to line it over Daniel Murphy's head into right field. Fortunately the runner from second had to hold up to make sure it wasn't caught, and so didn't score. Then Terry Collins brought in Bartolo Colon to relieve Syndergaard, and he induced a hard ground ball up the middle from Corey Seager. Murphy gloved it and flipped to Ruben Tejada, a little off-line. Tejada had to reach back for the ball as he was shuffling over to the second base bag, and then as he was spinning around to throw the ball to first Utley slammed into him, knocking him to the ground and, it transpired, breaking his fibula. Meanwhile, since the double play hadn't been completed, the runner from third scored, and the game was tied at 2.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
On Yoenis Cespedes and the MVP
So. .312/.357/.675. 36 runs driven, and 33 scored, in over 36 games. 14 homers, three triples, and nine doubles over that time. Four stolen bases, never caught stealing (for what that's worth). Mostly while playing center field, and providing dynamic defense in center or in left. That's what Yoenis Cespedes has done since coming to the New York Mets. Oh, and since they acquired him (including one game after the trade but before Cespedes got to the team) the Mets are 26 and 11. They've surged from two game behind the Washington Nationals to seven games up on them, including going 6-0 against the Nationals themselves. Before they got Cespedes, Baseball Prospectus gave the Mets just a 26.8% chance of seeing the Division series; now (not even including tonight's win) that's up to 94.6%. And Cespedes has been everywhere. He had a home run and also a run-scoring double in Monday's game, hit a big two-out, bases-clearing double in last night's game to get the Mets all the way back from a 7-1 deficit to trailing by just a single run (and would later score the tying run), and tonight he absolutely crushed a hanging slider off Drew Storen for a two-run shot to give the Mets a lead they would not relinquish in the 8th.
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Tiger 2000 >>> Jordan 2015
One of the announcers on the early coverage of the last round of the PGA Championship suggested that if Jordan Spieth were to win, for his third major championship of the year, he would have had the best year ever. Ahem. This is ridiculous. Here's what Spieth has done so far this year. He's won four tournaments, two of them majors, the others both relatively minor tournaments (the Valspar Championship and the John Deere Classic). He's finished second three times, third once, and in the top 10 thirteen times overall out of 20 tournaments. He's missed two cuts, one of them at the Players Championship, and has finished outside the top 25 four times in all. Now, that's a really, really great season.
But in 2000, Tiger Woods won, including three consecutive majors, nine total tournaments. He won his three majors by a combined 23 shots, compared to the 5 by which Spieth won his first two (and he doesn't look to add more than another couple today, if he does win). Overall Tiger won those nine tournaments by a combined margin of 46 shots, including three wins by at least 8 shots; both of Spieth's non-major wins were in playoffs, so he's got a combined margin of victory of just 5. Also, Tiger missed zero cuts; in fact, he didn't once finish outside the top 25! Only three times did he miss the top 10, compared to Spieth's seven (and counting). He led the Tour in GIR%, holes per eagle, birdies per round, scoring average (adjusted or otherwise), total driving, ball-striking, all-around ranking, par-3 scoring average, par-4 scoring average, par-5 scoring average, birdie percentage on par 4s and on par 5s, bounce-back, birdie conversion percentage, par breaker percentage, scoring average in rounds 1, 2, and 3, front and back nine scoring average, total eagles, lowest round, and, of course, the official money list. He was also World #1, by an enormous margin. Like, practically a 3-1 margin. Also he finished second in driving distance, putts per GIR, and final round scoring average, and was third in scrambling. His all-around ranking (the sum of his ranks in eight key statistics) was 40% lower than the second-place finisher, David Duval.
Spieth, meanwhile, leads the Tour in the following statistics, of those that existed in 2000: birdie average, scoring average (actual and adjusted), putts per GIR, one-putt percentage, putts per round, putts per round in round 2, lowest round, par breaker percentage, round 2 scoring average, back 9 scoring average, scoring average and birdie percentage on par 4s, lowest average, and, of course, the money list. That's a lot! But it's not as much as Tiger; in fact, Tiger led every single one of those stats except for the putting stats (and he was second in putts per GIR, the best putting stat that existed back in 2000). Meanwhile, Spieth is 55th in GIR%, 42nd in total driving (including 76th in distance and 85th in accuracy), 25th in par-3 scoring, 20th in par-5 scoring. Oh, and he's third in all-around ranking, with a figure about 30% above Will Wilcox's leading figure. (What?!)
The point is that, obviously, Jordan Spieth is a great player, and is having a great year, but he isn't coming close to dominating the Tour, either in terms of performance or in terms of statistics, the way Tiger did. If we're talking best years ever, and we're excluding Bobby Jones's 1930 for some reason and don't consider Hogan's 1953, or any of the years when he or Byron Nelson or whoever won double digits of tournaments, then there just isn't any question. Tiger's 2000 was the best year anyone has ever had, and I daresay it will continue to be for a long, long time.
But in 2000, Tiger Woods won, including three consecutive majors, nine total tournaments. He won his three majors by a combined 23 shots, compared to the 5 by which Spieth won his first two (and he doesn't look to add more than another couple today, if he does win). Overall Tiger won those nine tournaments by a combined margin of 46 shots, including three wins by at least 8 shots; both of Spieth's non-major wins were in playoffs, so he's got a combined margin of victory of just 5. Also, Tiger missed zero cuts; in fact, he didn't once finish outside the top 25! Only three times did he miss the top 10, compared to Spieth's seven (and counting). He led the Tour in GIR%, holes per eagle, birdies per round, scoring average (adjusted or otherwise), total driving, ball-striking, all-around ranking, par-3 scoring average, par-4 scoring average, par-5 scoring average, birdie percentage on par 4s and on par 5s, bounce-back, birdie conversion percentage, par breaker percentage, scoring average in rounds 1, 2, and 3, front and back nine scoring average, total eagles, lowest round, and, of course, the official money list. He was also World #1, by an enormous margin. Like, practically a 3-1 margin. Also he finished second in driving distance, putts per GIR, and final round scoring average, and was third in scrambling. His all-around ranking (the sum of his ranks in eight key statistics) was 40% lower than the second-place finisher, David Duval.
Spieth, meanwhile, leads the Tour in the following statistics, of those that existed in 2000: birdie average, scoring average (actual and adjusted), putts per GIR, one-putt percentage, putts per round, putts per round in round 2, lowest round, par breaker percentage, round 2 scoring average, back 9 scoring average, scoring average and birdie percentage on par 4s, lowest average, and, of course, the money list. That's a lot! But it's not as much as Tiger; in fact, Tiger led every single one of those stats except for the putting stats (and he was second in putts per GIR, the best putting stat that existed back in 2000). Meanwhile, Spieth is 55th in GIR%, 42nd in total driving (including 76th in distance and 85th in accuracy), 25th in par-3 scoring, 20th in par-5 scoring. Oh, and he's third in all-around ranking, with a figure about 30% above Will Wilcox's leading figure. (What?!)
The point is that, obviously, Jordan Spieth is a great player, and is having a great year, but he isn't coming close to dominating the Tour, either in terms of performance or in terms of statistics, the way Tiger did. If we're talking best years ever, and we're excluding Bobby Jones's 1930 for some reason and don't consider Hogan's 1953, or any of the years when he or Byron Nelson or whoever won double digits of tournaments, then there just isn't any question. Tiger's 2000 was the best year anyone has ever had, and I daresay it will continue to be for a long, long time.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Update on the Bartolo Colon Saberhagenometer
It's, uh, not going well. In our last update, which was also the first update, Bartolo Colon had five wins on the season against just one walk. Since then, though, he's got a 5-10 record and has walked 13 batters, dropping him to 10 wins and 14 walks on the season. His Saberhagen score is, thus, -4. Now, he's closed that gap a little bit recently, with no walks in his last four starts, one of which he won. And if he were to pitch really really well the rest of the way it wouldn't be crazy to see him climb back toward positive territory here. But it's really not very likely. If you want a Saberhagen, you really can't afford three-walk games, or back-to-back multi-walk games, or five starts in a row with a walk. Bartolo's had all three (and none of them overlapped). So, it's not looking good.
However! Five of his walks have been of the intentional variety, and in a sense it's not really fair to penalize him for them. In a sense it is, as it was his pitching that created the need to issue the walk, but they also don't represent his inability to throw strikes or anything like that. So if we define the Modified Saberhagen, defined as Wins minus (Walks minus Intentional Walks), then Colon is still at +1, and has a much more reasonable shot at it. Interestingly, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994, so his Modified Saberhagen score was identical to his normal Saberhagen score at +1. Of course, the Modified Saberhagen isn't really as impressive as the proper Saberhagen, but it's still got some validity.
It's a bit trickier to get a sense of who else has pulled off the Modified Saberhagen, since the "unintentional walks" stat often isn't kept as its own thing. I was able to make a rough stab at it using some custom FanGraphs leaderboards, though, which reveal two other completed seasons that just barely pulled it off: 2005 Carlos Silva (9 W, 9 BB, 2 IBB) and 2014 Phil Hughes (16 W, 16 BB, 1 IBB). Then there's 1997 Greg Maddux, who won 19 games and walked 20 batters, but six of those were intentional, giving him a Modified Saberhagen of +5! As much as all the other Saberhageners put together, counting 2015 Bartolo Colon. Maddux finished second in the Cy Young Award voting that year, to Pedro Martinez's last season with the Expos, and deservedly so, but only because peak Pedro was insane.
Now, this list only includes players who qualified for the ERA title and who played at a time when they keep track of intentional walks. So there may be others who have pulled off the Modified Saberhagen who don't show up here. (I could check for those with fewer innings, but that would just be more work so I'm not going to.) I think it's pretty clear that the Modified Saberhagen is orders of magnitude less impressive than the proper one, even if Saberhagen himself didn't care about the difference. Still, at least Colon's season isn't entirely lost.
However! Five of his walks have been of the intentional variety, and in a sense it's not really fair to penalize him for them. In a sense it is, as it was his pitching that created the need to issue the walk, but they also don't represent his inability to throw strikes or anything like that. So if we define the Modified Saberhagen, defined as Wins minus (Walks minus Intentional Walks), then Colon is still at +1, and has a much more reasonable shot at it. Interestingly, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994, so his Modified Saberhagen score was identical to his normal Saberhagen score at +1. Of course, the Modified Saberhagen isn't really as impressive as the proper Saberhagen, but it's still got some validity.
It's a bit trickier to get a sense of who else has pulled off the Modified Saberhagen, since the "unintentional walks" stat often isn't kept as its own thing. I was able to make a rough stab at it using some custom FanGraphs leaderboards, though, which reveal two other completed seasons that just barely pulled it off: 2005 Carlos Silva (9 W, 9 BB, 2 IBB) and 2014 Phil Hughes (16 W, 16 BB, 1 IBB). Then there's 1997 Greg Maddux, who won 19 games and walked 20 batters, but six of those were intentional, giving him a Modified Saberhagen of +5! As much as all the other Saberhageners put together, counting 2015 Bartolo Colon. Maddux finished second in the Cy Young Award voting that year, to Pedro Martinez's last season with the Expos, and deservedly so, but only because peak Pedro was insane.
Now, this list only includes players who qualified for the ERA title and who played at a time when they keep track of intentional walks. So there may be others who have pulled off the Modified Saberhagen who don't show up here. (I could check for those with fewer innings, but that would just be more work so I'm not going to.) I think it's pretty clear that the Modified Saberhagen is orders of magnitude less impressive than the proper one, even if Saberhagen himself didn't care about the difference. Still, at least Colon's season isn't entirely lost.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
It Isn't, or Shouldn't Be, the NFL's Job to Punish Crimes
So apparently the official talking point in the Boston sports world about the four-game suspension of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for what seems to have been his role in actually seriously cheating, at least in the AFC championship game last year right before the Patriots' Super Bowl win (and possibly, like, for many years prior) is that it's an outrage that Brady was suspended for twice as long as Ray Rice was for his domestic abuse. And like, so, the thing is, my instinct about Brady is that the suspension is an outrage, in that it should've been for a whole season. And so the Ray Rice comparison line annoys me, because I basically agree that the Ray Rice thing was handled disgracefully and that he got off awfully light. Certainly the point that, y'know, abusing footballs shouldn't be seen as worse than abusing women or whatever is an accurate one. But like, I dunno... I kind of feel like it isn't, or shouldn't be, the NFL's job to punish crimes? Like, domestic abuse is an offense against the victim and an offense against the state; it's not an offense against the National Football League, and cheating at football in the semifinal game of the NFL playoffs is. We wouldn't want the U.S. government, or the government of Massachusetts, to punish Brady for his cheating at football, I don't think, because it's not that kind of offense.
In my Criminal Law class we discussed at one point the idea of "shaming penalties," where instead of directly, like, punishing the (typically low-level) offender, e.g. by imprisoning or even fining them, but rather just basically publicizes their offense. There's a sense that these punishments manage to be less cruel than, say, incarceration, while still being unpleasant enough to be a deterrent (indeed, perhaps more of one) and maybe even, if done right, having some rehabilitative effects. One line of criticism is that they're humiliating, to which the defenders rather powerfully respond, have you seen our prisons? But another line of attack is that there's something a bit disturbing about where exactly the punishment comes from in these shaming punishments. It comes from everyone in the community. In the most troubling cases, the government seems pretty explicitly to be trying to foster a mob mentality that will enlist the public to carry out the sentence, basically, by basically making the offender persona non grata in that community. And this is kind of troubling. It's almost, like, an embrace of the lynch mob by the government, or at least it can approximate that. Obviously imprisonment often leads to that same kind of informal social sanction afterward, but I kind of think that it shouldn't, or at least not insofar as those sanctions are meant as sanctions rather than as sensible precautions against a potentially dangerous or untrustworthy person. I tend to think that we should let the state punish people, and then once it's had its say, we should welcome people back into society as full citizens, though without turning a blind eye to any dangers they may represent.
Which brings us back to Brady and Ray Rice. Like, it really, really shouldn't be the NFL's job to punish Ray Rice. And people who do bad things, including beat their girlfriends which is a very bad thing, shouldn't just stop being able to be part of society. The idea that sports leagues should have the policy that people who've committed crimes of a certain level should never be allowed to participate in them strikes me as a terrible one. The problem is that this all takes place in the shadow of the well-known fact that the state isn't doing it's effing job with regard to domestic violence, so basically if the NFL doesn't punish Ray Rice, no one will. And in certain ways the NFL is even in a better position to punish him than the state is, because it doesn't need to hear the victim testify, it doesn't need to get proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it can just say, hey, we saw the video, we know what we think went down, we're gonna suspend his ass. But that's a huge problem! For those of us who believe in the ideals of the criminal justice system, and of innocent until proven guilty and the like, the idea that when someone is known to have done a bad thing, this should be handled by having anyone in society who has power over them and who isn't bound by the Bill of Rights should just punish them any way they can, it's, like, it's really problematic, and it really does kind of feel like mob justice.
Now, that doesn't really point to a solution, since it's not like the general unenforcement of domestic violence laws is gonna change any time soon, and I'm not really saying that I think the NFL shouldn't be allowed to discipline its players for their off-field misdeeds. But it's wrong, I think, to reason from the fact that domestic violence is worse than cheating at football to the conclusion that the relative lengths of the Brady and Rice suspensions say something so terrible about the NFL's priorities. The NFL isn't in the business of outlawing domestic violence. It is in the business of making sure dudes don't cheat at football.* One of these things is much, much more its responsibility than the other, and that's not something wrong with the world. That's something right with the world! The NFL shouldn't just decide that, because domestic violence is so bad, it's going to assume as much responsibility for punishing and deterring it as it does for cheating at football, no more than any one of us has the right to go out and become a vigilante.
So, I'm sorry Boston, but pointing at Ray Rice doesn't give you a great argument for why Tom Brady is being treated unfairly.
*Well, arguably it is. Or at least it should be.
In my Criminal Law class we discussed at one point the idea of "shaming penalties," where instead of directly, like, punishing the (typically low-level) offender, e.g. by imprisoning or even fining them, but rather just basically publicizes their offense. There's a sense that these punishments manage to be less cruel than, say, incarceration, while still being unpleasant enough to be a deterrent (indeed, perhaps more of one) and maybe even, if done right, having some rehabilitative effects. One line of criticism is that they're humiliating, to which the defenders rather powerfully respond, have you seen our prisons? But another line of attack is that there's something a bit disturbing about where exactly the punishment comes from in these shaming punishments. It comes from everyone in the community. In the most troubling cases, the government seems pretty explicitly to be trying to foster a mob mentality that will enlist the public to carry out the sentence, basically, by basically making the offender persona non grata in that community. And this is kind of troubling. It's almost, like, an embrace of the lynch mob by the government, or at least it can approximate that. Obviously imprisonment often leads to that same kind of informal social sanction afterward, but I kind of think that it shouldn't, or at least not insofar as those sanctions are meant as sanctions rather than as sensible precautions against a potentially dangerous or untrustworthy person. I tend to think that we should let the state punish people, and then once it's had its say, we should welcome people back into society as full citizens, though without turning a blind eye to any dangers they may represent.
Which brings us back to Brady and Ray Rice. Like, it really, really shouldn't be the NFL's job to punish Ray Rice. And people who do bad things, including beat their girlfriends which is a very bad thing, shouldn't just stop being able to be part of society. The idea that sports leagues should have the policy that people who've committed crimes of a certain level should never be allowed to participate in them strikes me as a terrible one. The problem is that this all takes place in the shadow of the well-known fact that the state isn't doing it's effing job with regard to domestic violence, so basically if the NFL doesn't punish Ray Rice, no one will. And in certain ways the NFL is even in a better position to punish him than the state is, because it doesn't need to hear the victim testify, it doesn't need to get proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it can just say, hey, we saw the video, we know what we think went down, we're gonna suspend his ass. But that's a huge problem! For those of us who believe in the ideals of the criminal justice system, and of innocent until proven guilty and the like, the idea that when someone is known to have done a bad thing, this should be handled by having anyone in society who has power over them and who isn't bound by the Bill of Rights should just punish them any way they can, it's, like, it's really problematic, and it really does kind of feel like mob justice.
Now, that doesn't really point to a solution, since it's not like the general unenforcement of domestic violence laws is gonna change any time soon, and I'm not really saying that I think the NFL shouldn't be allowed to discipline its players for their off-field misdeeds. But it's wrong, I think, to reason from the fact that domestic violence is worse than cheating at football to the conclusion that the relative lengths of the Brady and Rice suspensions say something so terrible about the NFL's priorities. The NFL isn't in the business of outlawing domestic violence. It is in the business of making sure dudes don't cheat at football.* One of these things is much, much more its responsibility than the other, and that's not something wrong with the world. That's something right with the world! The NFL shouldn't just decide that, because domestic violence is so bad, it's going to assume as much responsibility for punishing and deterring it as it does for cheating at football, no more than any one of us has the right to go out and become a vigilante.
So, I'm sorry Boston, but pointing at Ray Rice doesn't give you a great argument for why Tom Brady is being treated unfairly.
*Well, arguably it is. Or at least it should be.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Introducing the Bartolo Colon Saberhagenometer
In 1994, Bret Saberhagen, of the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, did something rather impressive, something no one had done since 1919: he had more wins than walks. In 24 starts, he went 14-4 (the season was, you recall, strike-shortened), and allowed a meager 13 walks. No one who's thrown enough innings to qualify for the ERA title has done that since the deadball era. Two of the three people who did it between 1901 and 1919 were Christy Mathewson. A few relievers have done it in the interim, and plenty of people who didn't pitch a full season or anything like it, but no one with at least 65 innings pitched. Of course, Saberhagen's feat is slightly tainted by the strike, since he didn't get to keep it up over a full season, but that wasn't his fault.
Anyway, the point is, Bartolo Colon. He just won his fifth game of the season, out of six starts (the other being a rather tough loss because the Mets' offense got atrocious for a while there). In his first start, on Opening Day, he walked a dude. He hasn't made that mistake again. So, yeah, that's 1 walk, 5 wins. So I am hereby introducing the Saberhagenometer, a statistic defined as Wins Minus Walks. Bartolo Colon 2015 is the all-time leader in the statistic, at +4. (Well, okay, Christy Mathewson put up a +4 season in 1913, with 25 wins against just 21 walks, Dick Hall was +4 in 61.1 innings over 32 relief appearances at 10 and 6, and Deacon Phillippe was actually +5 in 1910 in 121.2 innings over 8 starts and 23 relief appearances, but he's bloody well close enough.) And like, I dunno, it seems like he could keep it up. He really gives off the impression of simply having decided that walking people is a bad idea, so he's not gonna do it. So this will be something to keep an eye on over the course of the season. And if he does get it done, the fact that the only two to do it in the modern era will both have been New York Mets is just pretty damn cool.
Oh, also, Matt Harvey is currently at +1 on the Saberhagenometer at 5 W, 4 BB, as is Michael Pineda of that other New York team at 3/2. That doesn't seem like nearly enough of a cushion, although since Matt Harvey is going to go 33-0 this year I guess he's got a chance.
Anyway, the point is, Bartolo Colon. He just won his fifth game of the season, out of six starts (the other being a rather tough loss because the Mets' offense got atrocious for a while there). In his first start, on Opening Day, he walked a dude. He hasn't made that mistake again. So, yeah, that's 1 walk, 5 wins. So I am hereby introducing the Saberhagenometer, a statistic defined as Wins Minus Walks. Bartolo Colon 2015 is the all-time leader in the statistic, at +4. (Well, okay, Christy Mathewson put up a +4 season in 1913, with 25 wins against just 21 walks, Dick Hall was +4 in 61.1 innings over 32 relief appearances at 10 and 6, and Deacon Phillippe was actually +5 in 1910 in 121.2 innings over 8 starts and 23 relief appearances, but he's bloody well close enough.) And like, I dunno, it seems like he could keep it up. He really gives off the impression of simply having decided that walking people is a bad idea, so he's not gonna do it. So this will be something to keep an eye on over the course of the season. And if he does get it done, the fact that the only two to do it in the modern era will both have been New York Mets is just pretty damn cool.
Oh, also, Matt Harvey is currently at +1 on the Saberhagenometer at 5 W, 4 BB, as is Michael Pineda of that other New York team at 3/2. That doesn't seem like nearly enough of a cushion, although since Matt Harvey is going to go 33-0 this year I guess he's got a chance.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
The Mets Should Use d'Arnaud and Plawecki as a Catching Tandem
What with Travis d'Arnaud's recent hand injury, Kevin Plawecki, one of the Mets' top prospects, just made his MLB debut. The typical way to think about the d'Arnaud/Plawecki relationship is that they're competing for the same job: the Mets' starting catcher. They both seem like they're probably good enough to be starting catchers in the big leagues, so presumably one of them will get traded at some point and they'll both have starting jobs, but only one of them will have it with the Mets. I don't think that's the right way for the Mets to handle things, at least not yet. Plawecki is going to get at least about a month's audition as the Mets' starting catcher now. Let's assume he plays pretty well, like someone who definitely doesn't just deserve to be sent back down to the Minors once the team has an alternative. What I think the Mets should do in that case is use d'Arnaud and Plawecki as a catching tandem, where neither is really the "backup." Probably you'd want to give d'Arnaud somewhat more playing time than Plawecki, just because he's probably a somewhat better player right now, but it should be more like 60/40 than 80/20. Hopefully the team would also have someone else on it who could function as an emergency catcher, thus allowing them to use whichever of Plawecki and d'Arnaud didn't start on a given day as a pinch-hitter without risking having no one to play catcher should the other get injured.
The advantage of a catching tandem is basically that you don't force anyone to be an everyday catcher. Being an everyday catcher is probably a pretty bad idea: Mike Piazza has said in his recent autobiography that he wishes someone had forced him to play catcher a lot less during his early years in the big leagues, because of how it wore him down over the course of his career. By giving d'Arnaud, say, four starts a week and Plawecki three, the Mets could keep them both fresh and minimize the wear and tear on them. That would probably benefit both players in the long run, and might also benefit the Mets if they get to the playoffs. Now, there are reasons why teams don't usually do this. There's a sense that it's a "waste" to use someone good enough to be a starting player as a backup, rather than trading them for pieces of equal value. You're also going to deprive your better catcher of playing time, which might be bad for their morale. Free agent catchers are unlikely to want to take a lesser salary in return for playing only 75% as often, and teams aren't likely to want to pay full starting catcher prices for someone to play just 75% of a full workload. And they certainly won't want to pay two different people decent-sized salaries for the same position.
But all of these problems don't apply to the Mets. d'Arnaud and Plawecki are roughly speaking as good as one another, with maybe Travis being slightly better due mostly to greater power potential, so you don't lose much by shifting some of his playing time to Plawecki. The team doesn't have any major holes that need plugging through trade, and the farm system is well-stocked, so there's no great harm in "wasting" these resources rather than trading them. Plawecki and d'Arnaud are both pre-arbitration playing for the league minimum, so it's not costly to have two solid catchers on the roster. Actually it might keep long-term costs down, by spreading out the counting stats between the two players rather than letting one of them accumulate more impressive numbers for arbitration. Oh, and also: d'Arnaud and Plawecki are said to be good friends, which would probably do a lot to mitigate the potential morale problems. The situation is, in other words, a perfect storm for using a tandem at catcher. And this would allow the Mets to ditch the replacement-level Anthony Recker, to keep their potentially All-Star caliber catcher d'Arnaud better rested, and to add one quality hitter to their bench (assuming the presence of an emergency catcher, possibly Eric Campbell). I don't really see much in the way of downside.
Assuming, that is, that Plawecki can hit at this level.
The advantage of a catching tandem is basically that you don't force anyone to be an everyday catcher. Being an everyday catcher is probably a pretty bad idea: Mike Piazza has said in his recent autobiography that he wishes someone had forced him to play catcher a lot less during his early years in the big leagues, because of how it wore him down over the course of his career. By giving d'Arnaud, say, four starts a week and Plawecki three, the Mets could keep them both fresh and minimize the wear and tear on them. That would probably benefit both players in the long run, and might also benefit the Mets if they get to the playoffs. Now, there are reasons why teams don't usually do this. There's a sense that it's a "waste" to use someone good enough to be a starting player as a backup, rather than trading them for pieces of equal value. You're also going to deprive your better catcher of playing time, which might be bad for their morale. Free agent catchers are unlikely to want to take a lesser salary in return for playing only 75% as often, and teams aren't likely to want to pay full starting catcher prices for someone to play just 75% of a full workload. And they certainly won't want to pay two different people decent-sized salaries for the same position.
But all of these problems don't apply to the Mets. d'Arnaud and Plawecki are roughly speaking as good as one another, with maybe Travis being slightly better due mostly to greater power potential, so you don't lose much by shifting some of his playing time to Plawecki. The team doesn't have any major holes that need plugging through trade, and the farm system is well-stocked, so there's no great harm in "wasting" these resources rather than trading them. Plawecki and d'Arnaud are both pre-arbitration playing for the league minimum, so it's not costly to have two solid catchers on the roster. Actually it might keep long-term costs down, by spreading out the counting stats between the two players rather than letting one of them accumulate more impressive numbers for arbitration. Oh, and also: d'Arnaud and Plawecki are said to be good friends, which would probably do a lot to mitigate the potential morale problems. The situation is, in other words, a perfect storm for using a tandem at catcher. And this would allow the Mets to ditch the replacement-level Anthony Recker, to keep their potentially All-Star caliber catcher d'Arnaud better rested, and to add one quality hitter to their bench (assuming the presence of an emergency catcher, possibly Eric Campbell). I don't really see much in the way of downside.
Assuming, that is, that Plawecki can hit at this level.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
For the Record
Mike Piazza made his MLB debut in 1992, and played in 1912 games until his retirement after the 2007 season. Over his 7745 plate appearances, he had 2127 hits, including 344 doubles and 427 home runs, and drew 759 walks against 1113 strikeouts, good for a batting line of .308/.377/.545. That gives him a wRC+ of 140. He drove in 1335 runs and scored 1048. Piazza was a catcher for at least part of 1630 of those games, 1602 of which as the starting catcher (the rest of his time split between first base and the designated hitter role), and while his 23% caught stealing mark was well below the league average of 31% and he wasn't the world's best pitch-blocker either, he is thought to have been one of the best catchers at history in framing pitches to produce extra called strikes, and his pitchers loved throwing to him. Add it all up and Piazza was worth 59.4 bWAR and 63.5 fWAR, the sixth- and fifth-highest marks all-time for a catcher, respectively (in both cases virtually tied with Yogi Berra). Versus a more stringent baseline, Piazza put up 35.7 bWAA and 38.4 fWAA*, and during the productive portion of his career, from 1993 through 2003, he accumulated 38 bWAA and 41.2 fWAA. Piazza also hit .242/.301/.458 over 133 post-season plate appearances, hitting six home runs and eight doubles and racking up 15 RBIs and 14 runs scored, and leading the New York Mets to the 2000 World Series with a monstrous .412/.545/.941 batting line in the NLCS and put up a .636 slugging percentage against the Yankees. Earlier today, in his third year on the ballot, Piazza received votes from 69.9% of Hall of Fame voters, just shy of the 75% necessary for enshrinement.
Craig Biggio made his MLB debut in 1988, and played in 2850 games until his retirement after the 2007 season. Over his 12504 plate appearances, he had 3060 hits, including 668 doubles and 291 home runs, and drew 1160 walks against 1753 strikeouts, good for a batting line of .281/.363/.433. That give shim a wRC+ of 115. He drove in 1175 runs and scored 1844. He also stole 414 bases, and was caught stealing 124 times. Like Piazza he came up as a catcher and caught in 428 games, but moved off the position. Biggio spent 363 games in the outfield but the vast bulk of his time at second base, appearing there in 1989 games. Though he won four Gold Gloves at second base from 1994 through 1997, available defensive metrics view him as having been mediocre at every position he played. Add it all up and Biggio was worth 65.1 WAR (per both sources), the twelfth- and tenth-highest totals for a second baseman ever, respectively. He accrued 28.7 bWAA and 24.3 fWAA, and during the productive portion of his career, from 1989 through 2001, he accumulated 35.6 bWAA and 30.0 fWAA. He also hit .234/.295/.323 over 185 post-season plate appearances, hitting two home runs and nine doubles with 11 RBIs and 23 runs scored, and was part of the 2005 Houston Astros team that made it to the World Series. (Biggio hit .295/.343/.377 in that post-season.) Earlier today, in his third year on the ballot, Biggio received the votes of 82.7% of the voters, and will therefore be inducted into the Hall of Fame later this year.
Mike Piazza was a better baseball player than Craig Biggio. This is, I think, incontrovertible. Piazza was the undisputed best-hitting catcher of all time. Biggio was a decent hitter and a decent baserunner, and maybe a decent fielder if we believe the people voting on Gold Gloves (though not if we believe the admittedly fairly primitive defensive metrics--in fact, both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference have Biggio with more negative defensive value at his positions, and at less valuable positions), but nothing special in any regard. But Biggio wasn't a catcher (or at least, unlike Piazza, he had to stop being one early in his career), and so he played a lot more games than Piazza and stuck around long enough after he was still good to get 3000 hits. Also, because he wasn't renowned for his power, he manages to escape the pall of the Steroid Era, which Piazza apparently doesn't despite the abject lack of anything remotely resembling evidence that he cheated. There is a cogent argument that Craig Biggio should not be a Hall of Famer. There is no cogent argument that Mike Piazza should not be a Hall of Famer. For at least a year, Biggio but not Piazza will be in the Hall. That's absurd, and the writers had better not make the travesty last any further years.
Piazza 2016!
*FanGraphs does not actually give a Wins Above Average statistic, but it gives Runs Above Average statistics for the four major components of WAR (hitting, baserunning, fielding, and position), and I calculated the listed figures from those.
Craig Biggio made his MLB debut in 1988, and played in 2850 games until his retirement after the 2007 season. Over his 12504 plate appearances, he had 3060 hits, including 668 doubles and 291 home runs, and drew 1160 walks against 1753 strikeouts, good for a batting line of .281/.363/.433. That give shim a wRC+ of 115. He drove in 1175 runs and scored 1844. He also stole 414 bases, and was caught stealing 124 times. Like Piazza he came up as a catcher and caught in 428 games, but moved off the position. Biggio spent 363 games in the outfield but the vast bulk of his time at second base, appearing there in 1989 games. Though he won four Gold Gloves at second base from 1994 through 1997, available defensive metrics view him as having been mediocre at every position he played. Add it all up and Biggio was worth 65.1 WAR (per both sources), the twelfth- and tenth-highest totals for a second baseman ever, respectively. He accrued 28.7 bWAA and 24.3 fWAA, and during the productive portion of his career, from 1989 through 2001, he accumulated 35.6 bWAA and 30.0 fWAA. He also hit .234/.295/.323 over 185 post-season plate appearances, hitting two home runs and nine doubles with 11 RBIs and 23 runs scored, and was part of the 2005 Houston Astros team that made it to the World Series. (Biggio hit .295/.343/.377 in that post-season.) Earlier today, in his third year on the ballot, Biggio received the votes of 82.7% of the voters, and will therefore be inducted into the Hall of Fame later this year.
Mike Piazza was a better baseball player than Craig Biggio. This is, I think, incontrovertible. Piazza was the undisputed best-hitting catcher of all time. Biggio was a decent hitter and a decent baserunner, and maybe a decent fielder if we believe the people voting on Gold Gloves (though not if we believe the admittedly fairly primitive defensive metrics--in fact, both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference have Biggio with more negative defensive value at his positions, and at less valuable positions), but nothing special in any regard. But Biggio wasn't a catcher (or at least, unlike Piazza, he had to stop being one early in his career), and so he played a lot more games than Piazza and stuck around long enough after he was still good to get 3000 hits. Also, because he wasn't renowned for his power, he manages to escape the pall of the Steroid Era, which Piazza apparently doesn't despite the abject lack of anything remotely resembling evidence that he cheated. There is a cogent argument that Craig Biggio should not be a Hall of Famer. There is no cogent argument that Mike Piazza should not be a Hall of Famer. For at least a year, Biggio but not Piazza will be in the Hall. That's absurd, and the writers had better not make the travesty last any further years.
Piazza 2016!
*FanGraphs does not actually give a Wins Above Average statistic, but it gives Runs Above Average statistics for the four major components of WAR (hitting, baserunning, fielding, and position), and I calculated the listed figures from those.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
The Argument for Keeping the Mets Together
The Mets are playing well right now. They're something like 7-2 over their current homestand, having won each of the three series in it and going for a sweep of the Marlins tomorrow behind suddenly en fuego Jacob deGrom. This is always really easy to do when things are going well over a short time scale, but I can't help myself from thinking that there's a really good argument to be made for keeping this current team together, more or less, for next year.
Here's what that roster could look like, more or less, using only people under team control already:
Here's what that roster could look like, more or less, using only people under team control already:
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