Bad Positional Thinking

A Fangraphs article about Mark Reynolds' awful defense this year ends by asking the question of whether the Orioles should make Reynolds the DH next year, when Vladimir Guerrero is gone. The conclusion is no, because, while his defense has been worth -22 runs above average this year, his positional adjustment for a year spent mostly at third base is approximately 0 runs while his positional adjustment as a DH would be around, uh, -22 runs. In general I'm okay with the philosophy behind this positional adjustment, but I think here they've got it all wrong. This is the kind of mistake you make by viewing "replacement" in the abstract while making GM- or manager-type decisions (rather than HOF-voter decisions), when you could be viewing replacement as meaning specific replacements.

If the Orioles' options are to have Reynolds at 3B and Player X as DH, where Player X is a league-average hitter for that position, or to have Reynolds as the DH and Player Y at 3B, where Player Y is a league-average third baseman both at the plate and in the field, then the above analysis is appropriate. But presumably the Orioles know who would be their Player X, and who their Player Y. In this case the question is whether having Player X's bat in the lineup instead of Player Y's would be worth more to the team than having Player Y manning third base instead of Mark Reynolds. Or maybe we're really talking about Player Z, who will be in the lineup regardless but could either DH or play the field, either at third or filling a hole vacated by another player who shifts over to third in Reynolds' absence. If that's the case, then we're not talking about offense at all, and the only question is whether the defensive alignment with Reynolds would be better or worse than the one without him. It might be the case that, awful defense notwithstanding, Reynolds needs to be playing third base, because if you take him off the field then someone like Chin-lung Hu would have to be a starting player, but it might not. Someone's going to be DH'ing, and someone will play third base. The only question is who ultimately gets into the lineup and how well the people playing the field can play their positions.

A Jason Bay Solution

This year with the Mets, Jason Bay has hit .308/.421/.519 with a home run every twenty at-bats and an extra-base hit every nine-and-a-half. Oh wait. That's what he's done against left-handed pitching. That's pretty good! Of course, in three times as many at-bats against right-handers, he's hit a paltry .223/.287/.326. That's awful. Now let's make things a little more interesting: Kirk Nieuwenhuis, at the head of the line of Mets minor-league outfielders, is left-handed. So is Fernando Martinez, a long-time top prospect. So is Lucas Duda, currently manning the corner of Citi Field's spacious outfield opposite to Bay. That really, really looks like a situation that calls out for some platooning, doesn't it? I've been advocating the release of Bay, but honestly I think with numbers like those against lefties we'd be much better served just making him share some playing time. It's just a thought.

In fact, it's a thought that gives me a pretty decent idea of what to do with the entire offensive side of the team. You'd have catchers Thole and Paulino, infielders Davis, Tejada, Reyes, Wright, Murphy, and outfielders Bay, Pagan, Duda, and Nieuwenhuis. That's 11 players. There are two people who can play every position. With very little sacrifice of quality any which way, you could get down to one righty (Wright) against a right-handed starter or two lefties (Davis and Duda, both of whom handle lefties well) against a left-handed one. Overall it's four righties, five lefties, and two switch-hitters. There's room for two more bench players. As far as I'm concerned Nick Evans ought be one of them, and I'd love to see Scott Hairston back, though I imagine there are plenty of competent thirteenth-man types. I think it adds up to a pretty compelling offense, honestly, and not even a very expensive one.

Can the Mets Afford Reyes? Yes, Easily, and Then Some

If the Mets want to take a maximally inactive approach this offseason, then their team next year will look something like this:

C: Josh Thole                     SP1: Johan Santana
1B: Ike Davis                    SP2: Jon Niese
2B: Daniel Murphy                    SP3: R.A. Dickey
SS: Ruben Tejada                    SP4: Dillon Gee
3B: David Wright                    SP5: Mike Pelfrey
LF: Jason Bay                    
CF: Angel Pagan                    CL: Bobby Parnell
RF: Lucas Duda                   

The bench and bullpen, meanwhile, will be filled with a bunch of rather low-level players from within the organization. My rough estimate is that such a team would have a payroll of approximately $86 million. There's a little bit of further downsizing they could do, too, if they wanted to, like replacing arbitration cases Angel Pagan and Mike Pelfrey with current minor-leaguers like Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Chris Schwinden, that could shave another few millions.

Voting as Sufficient, Con't

I just read a healthy-sized essay by John Rawls on the question of what creates an obligation to obey the law. But here's my problem: he's stipulating that we're talking about constitutional democracy, and indeed, in most of the scenarios he sketches out the person who has to decide whether or not they are obliged to follow a law they disagree with has in fact voted. A typical example: suppose you have a referendum or direct-democratic process for choosing between two income tax schemes, Person X votes for Law A, but the majority votes for Law B and therefore Law B is enacted. But it seems to me that, in such a situation, there is nothing more to say about whether Person X has an obligation to obey the law. Presumably constitutional provisions specify that, as a result of this referendum, the tax code that receives majority support will be enacted. If you vote in that referendum, you know that, or at least you ought to know that. Therefore, by participating in the process, you accept that. Honestly, what's so hard about this? I'm open to arguments that the obligation of someone who has never voted requires a more complex theory, but it simply does not need explaining why someone much obey a law that passes over their vote to the contrary. If "social contract" means nothing else, it means this.

Obama's Speech

Was awesome. That's not much of a surprise; his speeches are usually awesome, and this one, which was set up as Obama playing offense and making a big, bold proposal, was primed to be especially so. My attitude going into the speech was that, whatever Obama himself might say to the contrary, this was entirely political grandstanding, the fulcrum of his Clinton-to-Truman pivot. As a purely political speech, I thought it was great. He made his proposal, he spent a lot of time hammering home the message that these are sensible ideas to help people, and he included a bit of conditional pounding. As in, he said to the Republicans, "you guys are f@cking nuts if you don't pass this," which sets him up to respond to their not passing it by saying simply, "you guys are f@cking nuts." As I've said to some people over the past couple of days being back at school, if Obama does not start making this pivot, and hard, after Republicans inevitably refuse to pass any component of this plan, then I'm going to start getting very disillusioned with him very quickly.

However, events of the past twelve-or-so hours have got me thinking that maybe it isn't as inevitable as it might be. Republicans, including not just Mr. Oh-Please-Can't-I-Make-A-Deal Boehner but also Mr. Oh-No-You-Most-Certainly-Cannot Cantor, are talking in terms of finding common ground and looking for elements of Obama's proposals that they can agree on. That surprises me. In particular, it doesn't feel like they're setting themselves up very well for total refusal down the line. I hope Obama can use the Republicans' refusal, if it comes, as a sledgehammer to crush them with, and in particular as a tool to get people to blame them and not him for general world-suckitude come November '12, but I would much prefer to that scenario of embracing economic failure and trying to pin the blame on his opponents a world in which we can actually make the world better. So if they'll let him pass some of this plan, then great! What Obama most definitely should not do, however, is engage in bargaining with them. If they'll let him pass all the plan, then pass all the plan. If they'll let him pass some of the plan, then pass some of the plan. But don't get into trading specific spending cuts for this plan. The American Jobs Act (an unsurpassable name, for what it's worth!) includes a provision "paying for" itself by instructing the supercommittee to make additional deficit reductions that pay for it. That's all the offsetting you need. If Republicans aren't okay with that, then they can bugger off, and we go back to the original plan of hammering their asses for obstructionism and economic sabotage. Don't get bogged down, and it'll be hard to mess this up.

Obeying the Law, Authority, and Might vs. Right

My Philosophy of Law class has started up this week, and the first question we are pondering is whether there exists a general obligation to obey the law. Specifically, as my textbook puts it, is there a general obligation to obey every law, even laws that do not happen to coincide with an independent moral commandment? It wouldn't mean that it was morally right to obey every law if that obligation did exist, just that there was some moral force in favor of obedience. Maybe there would be a stronger moral force arguing for disobedience, for instance in the case of the civil rights movement, but there's some, admittedly inferior reason to obey the law even so.

The textbook's conclusion, at least during the introduction, appears to be no. They consider several arguments, and find all of them lacking. They consider consequentialist arguments, social-contract arguments, and finally John Rawls' fairness argument, and reject them each in turn. I do feel that, especially in considering the consequentialist arguments, they get a little forgetful of the fact that finding such an obligation to follow the law does not actually mean that one should follow the law; by the original premise of the question it strikes me that if one can show that on a consequentialist "pro/con" diagram on the question, "should I follow the law?" there is always some non-negligible entry in the "pro" column, you've found a general consequentialist moral impetus in favor of obedience. But I digress, because I think the most fruitful line of inquiry is in the social-contract category. I also think that asking the question the way my book does, "should one obey every law?", is rather confusing. It's better to ask, why should I follow any law?

The Republican Debates: Yes, They Really Are That Bad

I just got done watching this Republican debate, which was a new experience for me. For the first three debates, I simply followed the snarky left-wing liveblogs of the debates, thereby sparing myself the painful experience of seeing Republicans saying things. But hey, I'm back at school with people to watch with, so I gave it a shot. And the big takeaway for me was, yes, they really are that bad. The vast majority of actual passages about policy that any of these people spoke were just gibberish, in terms of the real merits of the issue. And that's on top of the fact that these people's professed value systems are something verging on wicked. So let no one ever accuse me again of simply opposing the Republicans because I haven't given them a chance: I spent two whole hours just now enduring Messrs. Perry, Romney, Paul, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, and Santorum, as well as Ms. Bachmann, and they are at least as bad as I would've expected. I shudder to think if any one of these people becomes President...