Team-Adjusted Wins

Last year, Felix Hernandez went 13-12 for the Seattle Mariners while C.C. Sabathia went 21-7 for the New York Yankees, David Price went 19-6 for the Tampa Bay Rays, and Jon Lester went 19-9 for the Boston Red Sox. King Felix won the Cy Young Award, however, largely because his 2.27 ERA and 249.2 innings pitched were both miles better than the corresponding numbers put up by the other three pitchers (3.18/237.2, 2.72/208.2, and 3.25/208.0, respectively). Some persons complained about this, arguing that while ERA, innings pitched, and the Wins Above Replacement metric largely derived from those two figures are nice, having an essentially .500 won-loss record just isn't okay for the pitcher anointed as best in the league. Well, here's a way to synthesize these two concerns: team-adjusted wins.

Not Your Father's Republicans, Part N

I've recently hit upon a way of describing the problems of the current Republican Party (actually, I devised this when talking politics with someone who got paired with me and my dad for a round of golf the other day). In the past, you could describe the party as being basically the Capitalism 101 Republicans. That is to say, standard introductory economics textbooks are often filled with lots of paeans to the way that free markets work, and assorted well-intentioned but misguided liberal schemes for interfering with the market to help people would end up being problematic. For instance, the standard little diagrams about how minimum wages or rent control do more harm than good. Combined with an implicit understanding that maximizing real GDP is the only valid economic policy goal, i.e. turning a blind eye to any and all issues of distribution, this leads us to a kind of standard right-of-center platform.

What the Mets Should Do

They should go all-in on Yu Darvish, and then hope to use that signing to lure Ichiro Suzuki into okaying a trade to the Mets in exchange for Jason Bay. That's on the assumption that the team will be reasonably willing to try not to suck next year. Now sure, I know Ichiro has sucked this year, but a) there's significant evidence he ought to be playing better; b) he's the kind of player, in common with Jose Reyes, who ought to benefit rather than suffer from CitiField's spacious dimensions, and c) Jason Bay's kind of awful, too. Obviously the main point here is still Darvish, but I do think the lateral Ichiro-for-Bay move would be a benefit. Duda-Pagan-Suzuki is a better outfield than Bay-Pagan-Duda; obviously, substituting someone better for Duda or someone different for Pagan doesn't change that fact. And I like the idea of a lineup that starts Reyes-Suzuki-Wright-Davis. Plus, obviously, the Santana-Darvish-Niese-Dickey-Gee rotation would be sick.

Anyway, just a thought. They won't do it, but it would be cool.

Defamation has to be FALSE!!!

Charles Krauthammer writes, in a recent column about Barack Obama's (long overdue) decision to accuse Republicans of a more-or-less intentional sabotage of the American economy to boost their party's prospects in the 2012 election:

Charging one’s opponents with bad faith is the ultimate political ad hominem. It obviates argument, fact, logic, history.

Let's start with the fact that this is an inaccurate description of "ad hominem." Wikipedia recognizes several kinds of argumentum ad hominem: the abusive, in which you attack Person X's character to undermine a point Person X is making; the circumstantial, in which you argue that Person Y's position and circumstances automatically incline them to make the point they are making, meaning that it carries less weight; and the "tu quoque," which in English I think would be rendered "you're one to talk," meaning that Person Z has done a thing that they say is bad.

Why I Still Dislike the Word "Progressive"

A few months ago I wrote a post with very nearly the same title as this one. I'm writing a sequel to it, of sorts, which also ought to incorporate an idea I've sometimes had that I can't seem to find on my blog yet. This sequel is occasioned by a post on Daily Kos that is attempting to outline a comprehensive theory of liberalism. The money quote, as I see it:

Instead, the progressive vision of government is simple: government is the entity most responsible for ensuring equality of opportunity.

Never mind that, as it happens, I quite like the idea of ensuring equality of opportunity, especially if you construe the words as, uh, liberally as I think you should. Indeed, an earlier post of mine attempting to define the fundamental philosophy of liberalism reaches a conclusion that can be viewed as nearly identical to this statement above. But I have a rather severe problem with this way of phrasing the liberal vision, namely that it isn't really a complete political philosophy, by which I mean that it does not address the idea of why we ought have government in the first place.

The 17th Amendment and the States

Texas Gov. Rick Perry apparently is one of the people who opposes the 17th Amendment, which shifted the election of Senators from a power of state legislatures to something handled by direct popular election in each state. Here's the quote:

I think the issue is about consolidating the power in Washington, D.C. The 17th Amendment is one of those where they were making... the states were historically more in control when they decided who those senators were going to be. They took the states out of the process at that particular point in time. So that’s the... uh... the historic concept of checks and balances, when you had the concept of the federal government and the states. The 17th Amendment is when the states started getting out of balance with the federal government, is my belief.

Now, see, he's not entirely wrong about this. It is indeed very possible that the switch to direct election of Senators created a political culture in the federal government that is less respectful of state power, and/or less reticent about using federal power, depending on your point of view. But what Perry glosses over entirely is why exactly this is a bad thing.

Rape Abortions and Paternalism

Rick Santorum's argument against allowing abortions in the case of rape apparently includes the following: that it would "put her [the woman] through another trauma." I don't mean to comment here on the merits of the overall issue, but if our concern here is for the woman, surely we should let her decide? No woman who doesn't want an abortion gets one (and if they do, that's a different subject entirely); how do we make the woman's life better by denying her the choice of whether she prefers the trauma of an abortion to the trauma of bearing her rapist's child? Again, not commenting on whether the woman should have the right to make that choice vis-a-vis the fetus (here), but if we're concerned for the woman we should let her decide what's best for her herself, right?