The Mets have a bit of a problem on their hands. Well, okay, it's not an actual problem, or at least it's not a problem as a net matter, but it will have some problematic aspects. They have too many good young pitchers. Too many good young starting pitchers, that is. By my count it's about six guys, not even counting a few players who seem like they might be able to be MLB-average inning-eater types like Dillon Gee. They've got Matt Harvey, 24, who just set a new Mets record for lowest ERA in his first 30 career starts. They've got Jon Niese, 26, a lefty whose career 4.09 ERA is probably quite a bit worse than he's actually pitched. They've got Zack Wheeler, 23, who's just made it to the majors and is off to a 4-1 start that's better than he's pitched but who has similar stuff to Harvey (read: 98-mph gas and wicked breaking balls). They've got Noah Syndergaard, 20, the centerpiece of the R.A. Dickey trade, who sports a career 2.54 minor league ERA with 298 strikeouts and just 77 walks in 269.2 career innings. They've got Rafael Montero, 22, with just 58 walks in 303.2 career minor league innings to go with 282 strikeouts. They've also got a bunch of exciting young arms like Domingo Tapia, 21, career 3.79 minor league ERA, and Gabriel Ynoa, 20, career 2.55 minor league ERA, who are further from the majors but at least a few of whom should be similarly situated to Montero and Syndergaard in another couple of years.
And then there's Jenrry Mejia, the Mets' original highly-touted pitching prospect of recent years. In fact, he was highly touted so long ago that he feels like a failed prospect at this point. After being misused throughout the 2010 season, bounced around between starting, relieving, the majors and the minors, he developed a need for Tommy John surgery after just five minor league starts in 2011. Upon his return from that surgery late last year, which was a pretty quick rehab anyway, he lost the natural cutting action on his fastball that had made him such an exciting prospect. He looked like he might, at best, end up as a competent middle reliever, but it seemed that neither quality starter nor dominant late-inning reliever were in his future anymore. Until today, his 2013 MLB debut in a spot-start role for a double-header. Apparently he's made some mechanical adjustments and the cut is back on his fastball. So far he's thrown 6 innings, during which time he's struck out 7, walked none, allowed 7 hits, and gotten 8 groundball outs. Oh, and all the hits were singles, of which only one or two were at all hard-hit. All on just 84 pitches. Oh, and he has yet to allow a run. He's not on track for a complete game or anything, and has allowed his fair share of hits, but this is a dominant outing so far.
And if he's back in the conversation as a potentially above-average starting pitcher, then the 2014 or 2015 rotation starts to look very crowded. Harvey, Wheeler, Niese, Mejia, Montero, Syndergaard. That's one too many. Oh, and you've got Dillon Gee on the outside looking in, which is perhaps appropriate given his career 4.06 ERA but he's shown, at times, that perhaps he can be better than that. So the Mets are seriously loaded with starting-pitching assets, and will need to figure out whom to trade and whom to slot into the rotation. This is how good Mets teams look, with a glut of good young pitching. It's pretty exciting.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Making Stuff: Not That Much Fun
As this Matt Yglesias post points out, the share of American jobs that are counted as "manufacturing" jobs has been shrinking, pretty much steadily, for decades. Six decades, give or take. Now, during the Obama Administration, it's basically flat-lining, which people are hailing as a manufacturing renaissance when of course it is no such thing. Basically, just before WWII around 31% of all jobs were manufacturing ones, at the height of the war that number had jumped to nearly 39%, it fell back to maybe 32% after the war, and then it just kept going down, and now we're at 9% and stabilized. I don't have a whole lot to say about this 'cause I'm not mostly an economist, but one thought I do have about it is that this is the story of progress. The actual work of making stuff in a modern industrialized economy is pretty lousy. You're basically a factory worker, which doesn't even have as much spiritual satisfaction from beholding the product of your labor as an actual tradesman of the late-Medieval or early modern period. Now, many manufacturing jobs are good jobs, because we've developed a social convention that because manufacturing is such lousy work you should be well-compensated for it, a convention that of course was the doing mostly of unions fighting for it. In fact, actually, I think you could take the relative success of unionization in manufacturing trades as evidence that the work is terrible, because terrible work creates pissed-off workers, who decide to fight back. But there's no reason why other jobs have to be particularly worse as employment than manufacturing jobs, and I think most jobs in the "service" sector of the economy basically just involve much more pleasant work than manufacturing ones do. Maybe I'm being a bit naive about how soul-crushing a lot of office jobs or retail jobs are, who knows, but there's certainly a lot less around your work-place that can kill you. So on the production side of things, moving away from manufacturing is a sign of progress: we're doing less unpleasant work. If that means that the average terms of employment have gotten worse, that's only because we've let them, and we could as a society decide to change that.
It's also progress when you think about the consumption side. I don't think the demand for physical stuff in society is limitless. People basically kind of just need a certain amount of physical stuff to enable them to do the things they want to do. Therefore, it makes all kinds of sense that as a society gets richer and more prosperous and as its productive capacity increases, there will not be a correspondingly large increase in the amount of physical stuff it requires. Certainly from an environmental perspective we should hope that there wouldn't be. This allows, or almost sort of forces, that increasingly prosperous society to devote less and less of its efforts to the manufacture of physical stuff. Or, to put it another way, manufactured goods are emphatically not something on which a thriving society will naturally spend its increase in wealth. Things like better education, better health care, a better array of restaurants and foodstuffs, more entertainment, etc., and also more leisure i.e. time spent not working on anything, definitely are the things that increasingly rich societies will divert more and more attention to, so it is completely natural that we should see manufacturing jobs become a much more marginal part of the economy. After all, the exact same thing happened to agriculture, and we've managed to live with the consequences of lots of awesome food and we don't all have to be farmers. There's no reason to fear the consequence of lots of awesome stuff and we don't all have to be factory workers, either.
It's also progress when you think about the consumption side. I don't think the demand for physical stuff in society is limitless. People basically kind of just need a certain amount of physical stuff to enable them to do the things they want to do. Therefore, it makes all kinds of sense that as a society gets richer and more prosperous and as its productive capacity increases, there will not be a correspondingly large increase in the amount of physical stuff it requires. Certainly from an environmental perspective we should hope that there wouldn't be. This allows, or almost sort of forces, that increasingly prosperous society to devote less and less of its efforts to the manufacture of physical stuff. Or, to put it another way, manufactured goods are emphatically not something on which a thriving society will naturally spend its increase in wealth. Things like better education, better health care, a better array of restaurants and foodstuffs, more entertainment, etc., and also more leisure i.e. time spent not working on anything, definitely are the things that increasingly rich societies will divert more and more attention to, so it is completely natural that we should see manufacturing jobs become a much more marginal part of the economy. After all, the exact same thing happened to agriculture, and we've managed to live with the consequences of lots of awesome food and we don't all have to be farmers. There's no reason to fear the consequence of lots of awesome stuff and we don't all have to be factory workers, either.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
"A Better Bargain"?
That's apparently the new Obama slogan/catchphrase/hashtag (no, seriously) from his economic speech today. The idea is that his agenda is to "build a better bargain for the middle class." Hmmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, right: from two different Roosevelts and Harry Truman. How about, instead of using a phrase that's an obvious rip-off of "New Deal" or "Fair Deal" or "Square Deal," or really kind of trying to be all of those at once, they finally embrace the obvious slogan to describe Obama's long-term economic agenda?
Jeez, Slow Down!
Sort of continuing the theme from my recent post arguing against the insane, over-the-top rhetoric about slow play, I thought I'd share an anecdote from my round of golf today. My dad and I were playing at our local course, and we both played pretty badly. I shot a 60 for nine holes, and he had a 58. We finished our round in slightly under two hours, maybe 115 minutes overall, so less than one minute per aggregate group stroke. (As my dad points out, it's not clear that there isn't some causality from rushing the play to the poor play, but that's beside the point right now.) Now, there isn't a formal par time for this course, but I definitely feel that a four-hour eighteen hole round is very much the standard. At the somewhat-tougher course my family plays in Cape May, there is an official par time and it's around 2:12 or 2:15 for each nine. My dad and I played in under par time today, in other words, I'm fairly certain. You definitely couldn't accuse us of slow play; I was actually surprised how fast it all went, given how awful I in particular was.
But that's all measuring against what I might call the objective or absolute standard, comparing our overall time performance against a theoretical ideal. The typical way to measure pace of play on a golf course, however, is subjective/relative: are you keeping pace with the group in front of you? Now, that's not always relevant, if your group is a foursome who tee off just behind a fast single or whatever, but what is true is that if you do keep pace with the group in front of you then you are doing nothing wrong in terms of pace of play, though the converse might not hold. Today, the group in front of us was a foursome, so we, being a twosome, should have had no trouble keeping up with them. And, as I said, we were not playing shamefully slow; we were playing rather, though not incredibly, quickly.
But they left us in their dust. They were in carts, we were walking, and after a few holes we just lost contact with them, and were playing as if there were no one in front of us. They must have been playing insanely fast, given that they were a foursome, basically just zipping from one shot to the next in their carts and not taking much time over anything. There was another twosome behind us, also in carts and therefore waiting for us on most shots, and the fact that we had failed to keep up with that foursome made the whole thing feel a bit uncomfortable, despite, as I keep reiterating, the fact that we were not playing overly slowly.
And that's really the point of the whole anecdote. If most of the groups out there on public courses are playing at such a hectic pace, using carts and a lack of care over their shots to achieve times way below standard, it creates an environment in which a twosome of conscientious golfers playing the game seriously and trying to hit each shot as best they can, i.e. taking time over their shots, but not playing slowly are constantly made to feel rushed. And, of course, as the authorities of the game encourage impatience and hurrying of one's neighboring fellow golfers in the name of combating slow play, one increasingly must assume that the people in the group behind you are in fact getting very impatient, and probably even feeling self-righteous about it. They may or may not be, but that is increasingly held up as the honorable, appropriate reaction for people in that position. It makes the whole thing very uncomfortable, and needlessly so: is it really that onerous to take the full four hours to play a round of golf? I get not wanting to spend five hours on something you expect to finish an hour earlier, but if you only have three hours or three and a half, don't go out expecting to play eighteen holes of golf. You'll have to rush yourself, and worse, you'll end up rushing the people around you. And that is at least as much a sin as making the group behind you wait a few extra minutes to finish their round.
But that's all measuring against what I might call the objective or absolute standard, comparing our overall time performance against a theoretical ideal. The typical way to measure pace of play on a golf course, however, is subjective/relative: are you keeping pace with the group in front of you? Now, that's not always relevant, if your group is a foursome who tee off just behind a fast single or whatever, but what is true is that if you do keep pace with the group in front of you then you are doing nothing wrong in terms of pace of play, though the converse might not hold. Today, the group in front of us was a foursome, so we, being a twosome, should have had no trouble keeping up with them. And, as I said, we were not playing shamefully slow; we were playing rather, though not incredibly, quickly.
But they left us in their dust. They were in carts, we were walking, and after a few holes we just lost contact with them, and were playing as if there were no one in front of us. They must have been playing insanely fast, given that they were a foursome, basically just zipping from one shot to the next in their carts and not taking much time over anything. There was another twosome behind us, also in carts and therefore waiting for us on most shots, and the fact that we had failed to keep up with that foursome made the whole thing feel a bit uncomfortable, despite, as I keep reiterating, the fact that we were not playing overly slowly.
And that's really the point of the whole anecdote. If most of the groups out there on public courses are playing at such a hectic pace, using carts and a lack of care over their shots to achieve times way below standard, it creates an environment in which a twosome of conscientious golfers playing the game seriously and trying to hit each shot as best they can, i.e. taking time over their shots, but not playing slowly are constantly made to feel rushed. And, of course, as the authorities of the game encourage impatience and hurrying of one's neighboring fellow golfers in the name of combating slow play, one increasingly must assume that the people in the group behind you are in fact getting very impatient, and probably even feeling self-righteous about it. They may or may not be, but that is increasingly held up as the honorable, appropriate reaction for people in that position. It makes the whole thing very uncomfortable, and needlessly so: is it really that onerous to take the full four hours to play a round of golf? I get not wanting to spend five hours on something you expect to finish an hour earlier, but if you only have three hours or three and a half, don't go out expecting to play eighteen holes of golf. You'll have to rush yourself, and worse, you'll end up rushing the people around you. And that is at least as much a sin as making the group behind you wait a few extra minutes to finish their round.
Ike Davis, Non-Automatic Out
It's not good for a Major League baseball team to have spots in its batting order that are essentially automatic outs. National League teams all have one of those, for the first several innings anyway, for the pitcher, but they all have that in common so it more or less cancels out (except for the Pirates). But you don't want any other spots to be that bad, and if they are, hopefully you're getting Ozzie Smith-type defense out of it and you can bury the guy in the 8 or 9 spot. Having, say, someone you want to think of as your cleanup hitter, a power-hitting first baseman, say, suddenly decide to become an automatic out is basically an unremitting disaster, especially since you'll probably spend a while leaving them in the #4 spot, and then gradually moving them down to #5, and then #6, and then maybe #7. So they're not just making outs all the time, they're making outs in more important spots than you'd really like to be giving them, given how terrible they are.
Anyone who's watched any of the 2013 Mets, of course, knows I'm talking about one Ike Davis. As he did in 2012, he got off to a very slow start, but a) he didn't have a Spring Training bout of valley fever as an excuse, and b) he didn't ever snap out of it. On June 9th, Ike was batting .161 with a .242 on-base percentage and a paltry .258 slugging percentage. He had hit only five home runs, only three doubles, and had driven in only 16 runs in 207 plate appearances over 55 games. Terrible numbers for anyone, but as I said, a catastrophe of epic scale from a left-handed slugging first baseman expected to protect David Wright in the cleanup spot. Accordingly, Ike got his ass sent down to AAA, to the Las Vegas 51s. There, however, he seemed to find his stroke, hitting .293/.424/.667 in 21 games and belting 7 home runs, to go along with 7 doubles. The Pacific Coast League in general, and Vegas in particular, is a great offensive environment, but a 1.091 OPS is pretty bloody terrific in any environment. So they brought Ike back.
Now, Keith Hernandez keeps saying that he thinks Ike looks the same as he did in the early part of the season, out in front on pitches, lunging, etc. But the simple fact is that Ike has stopped being an automatic out. The power isn't really there, but everything else is. In his first game back, on June 5th, Ike went 3-5 with a walk, two runs scored, two driven in, and a strikeout. And the strikeout was on a borderline 3-2 pitch that I thought was a ball. In other words, in 6 plate appearances Ike had 6 good showings; he didn't give away a single at-bat. That looked very promising. Obviously he hasn't kept that pace up, but since his return he's got a .256 batting average with, more importantly, a very nice .370 OBP. The power still isn't there; of his 10 hits, 2 have been doubles but he hasn't had any home runs, so the slugging percentage stands at just .308. That will need to change, and the fact that the two doubles were in the last two games is encouraging. But the simple fact is that 37% of the time Ike Davis strides to the plate since his return to MLB, he does not make an out. Before being sent down, that number was 24%. That's the difference between terrible and great, at this particular, very important, aspect of overall performance. If he can keep it up I have no doubt the power will show up, because he just does have tremendous raw power, and he might be able to put together a monster second half as he did last year.
If so, he'll be perhaps the toughest player in all of baseball to forecast going forward. Which is the real Ike Davis, the guy who's a threat to hit 40 home runs or the guy who isn't a threat to break the Mendoza line?
Anyone who's watched any of the 2013 Mets, of course, knows I'm talking about one Ike Davis. As he did in 2012, he got off to a very slow start, but a) he didn't have a Spring Training bout of valley fever as an excuse, and b) he didn't ever snap out of it. On June 9th, Ike was batting .161 with a .242 on-base percentage and a paltry .258 slugging percentage. He had hit only five home runs, only three doubles, and had driven in only 16 runs in 207 plate appearances over 55 games. Terrible numbers for anyone, but as I said, a catastrophe of epic scale from a left-handed slugging first baseman expected to protect David Wright in the cleanup spot. Accordingly, Ike got his ass sent down to AAA, to the Las Vegas 51s. There, however, he seemed to find his stroke, hitting .293/.424/.667 in 21 games and belting 7 home runs, to go along with 7 doubles. The Pacific Coast League in general, and Vegas in particular, is a great offensive environment, but a 1.091 OPS is pretty bloody terrific in any environment. So they brought Ike back.
Now, Keith Hernandez keeps saying that he thinks Ike looks the same as he did in the early part of the season, out in front on pitches, lunging, etc. But the simple fact is that Ike has stopped being an automatic out. The power isn't really there, but everything else is. In his first game back, on June 5th, Ike went 3-5 with a walk, two runs scored, two driven in, and a strikeout. And the strikeout was on a borderline 3-2 pitch that I thought was a ball. In other words, in 6 plate appearances Ike had 6 good showings; he didn't give away a single at-bat. That looked very promising. Obviously he hasn't kept that pace up, but since his return he's got a .256 batting average with, more importantly, a very nice .370 OBP. The power still isn't there; of his 10 hits, 2 have been doubles but he hasn't had any home runs, so the slugging percentage stands at just .308. That will need to change, and the fact that the two doubles were in the last two games is encouraging. But the simple fact is that 37% of the time Ike Davis strides to the plate since his return to MLB, he does not make an out. Before being sent down, that number was 24%. That's the difference between terrible and great, at this particular, very important, aspect of overall performance. If he can keep it up I have no doubt the power will show up, because he just does have tremendous raw power, and he might be able to put together a monster second half as he did last year.
If so, he'll be perhaps the toughest player in all of baseball to forecast going forward. Which is the real Ike Davis, the guy who's a threat to hit 40 home runs or the guy who isn't a threat to break the Mendoza line?
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Save John Boehner!
Or perhaps more like "save" John Boehner.
First, read this post by Jonathan Chait, and then perhaps also read the long-form piece he links to in the first sentence. Basically the point is that John Boehner's ongoing struggles to control the insane right-hand flank of his caucus, which is about 60% of that caucus, are, well, an ongoing struggle, and not getting any easier. Okay, now you're caught up, and I can make my point, which is this:
It seems possible that, sometime in the future, John Boehner might lose his Speakership. Well, okay, as phrased that's a certainty. More interestingly it seems likely that he might lose his Speakership to a Republican, possibly before the end of 2014 or possibly in the next Congress, when it's quite likely we'll still have a Republican majority. But actually I should rephrase this again: it's quite possible that Boehner might, without his party having become the minority, lose the party leadership election, i.e. lose the support of a majority of his caucus. Ordinarily that is tantamount to losing your Speakership, but in this case it might not be, and this is where my proposal comes in.
Suppose we reach a situation sometime early next year, or late this year, where 60% of House Republicans would prefer a different leader. Maybe Paul Ryan, maybe Paul Broun, who knows. They're crazy, and I shan't bother trying to predict their craziness on this score. The other 40% of the Republican caucus, however, still wants Boehner as their leader, and as Speaker. That's about 94 votes for Boehner, and 140 for the designated loon. There are also, in the House of Representatives, 200 Democrats. Now, I honestly don't know what happens if they all vote for Pelosi, who's presumably their first choice for Speaker right now. I think we go into further balloting, and probably eventually one or the other Republican side gives up and they coalesce around one candidate. But what if the Democrats vote John Boehner for Speaker?
That would give him a majority.
A majority most of whom were Democrats.
And it would make him Nancy Pelosi's pet.
Now, this strategy is not guaranteed to succeed. In fact, making it work would be kind of tricky. The ordinary play is that parties hold internal leadership elections and then, when it comes time to vote for Speaker, they all fall in line behind the person who won the internal election. But there are 200 Democrats, so if they were disciplined about things we would only need 18 Republicans, one of whom would presumably John Boehner himself, to go along with it. There are 234 Republicans; that's 7.7% of the caucus required. The more conservative guy could get 92% support from his caucus and yet lose to the fusion Boehner ticket. So we would just need a) for Boehner himself to feel sufficiently desperate to retain his job that he'd be willing to do it using Democratic votes, and to become Pelosi's pet (which might honestly be easier than his current gig, heh) and b) for 17 other Republicans to feel sufficiently loyal to Boehner and/or betrayed, threatened, etc. by the Tea Party types to go along with it.
The former, well, in his heart of hearts I imagine Boehner would do it in a heartbeat, but I'm not sure he'd be able to actually do it in reality. For one thing, he'd almost certainly lose his next primary, so it would be a short-term solution, but if he's lost the Speakership anyway that might be better than the alternatives. As for the latter, they'd also definitely lose their next primaries, so I doubt it would be possible. And I honestly doubt the Democrats will be creative enough to think of it, although if there's one Democrat who might be it's definitely Nancy Pelosi. Still, I think it would be a pretty effective strategy to mess with the Republicans and maybe, just maybe, make it possible to get an act of legislation through the Chamber. The only alternative, I think, is just pure, unremitting chaos as soon as the insurgent faction get a majority of their caucus. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening right now.
First, read this post by Jonathan Chait, and then perhaps also read the long-form piece he links to in the first sentence. Basically the point is that John Boehner's ongoing struggles to control the insane right-hand flank of his caucus, which is about 60% of that caucus, are, well, an ongoing struggle, and not getting any easier. Okay, now you're caught up, and I can make my point, which is this:
It seems possible that, sometime in the future, John Boehner might lose his Speakership. Well, okay, as phrased that's a certainty. More interestingly it seems likely that he might lose his Speakership to a Republican, possibly before the end of 2014 or possibly in the next Congress, when it's quite likely we'll still have a Republican majority. But actually I should rephrase this again: it's quite possible that Boehner might, without his party having become the minority, lose the party leadership election, i.e. lose the support of a majority of his caucus. Ordinarily that is tantamount to losing your Speakership, but in this case it might not be, and this is where my proposal comes in.
Suppose we reach a situation sometime early next year, or late this year, where 60% of House Republicans would prefer a different leader. Maybe Paul Ryan, maybe Paul Broun, who knows. They're crazy, and I shan't bother trying to predict their craziness on this score. The other 40% of the Republican caucus, however, still wants Boehner as their leader, and as Speaker. That's about 94 votes for Boehner, and 140 for the designated loon. There are also, in the House of Representatives, 200 Democrats. Now, I honestly don't know what happens if they all vote for Pelosi, who's presumably their first choice for Speaker right now. I think we go into further balloting, and probably eventually one or the other Republican side gives up and they coalesce around one candidate. But what if the Democrats vote John Boehner for Speaker?
That would give him a majority.
A majority most of whom were Democrats.
And it would make him Nancy Pelosi's pet.
Now, this strategy is not guaranteed to succeed. In fact, making it work would be kind of tricky. The ordinary play is that parties hold internal leadership elections and then, when it comes time to vote for Speaker, they all fall in line behind the person who won the internal election. But there are 200 Democrats, so if they were disciplined about things we would only need 18 Republicans, one of whom would presumably John Boehner himself, to go along with it. There are 234 Republicans; that's 7.7% of the caucus required. The more conservative guy could get 92% support from his caucus and yet lose to the fusion Boehner ticket. So we would just need a) for Boehner himself to feel sufficiently desperate to retain his job that he'd be willing to do it using Democratic votes, and to become Pelosi's pet (which might honestly be easier than his current gig, heh) and b) for 17 other Republicans to feel sufficiently loyal to Boehner and/or betrayed, threatened, etc. by the Tea Party types to go along with it.
The former, well, in his heart of hearts I imagine Boehner would do it in a heartbeat, but I'm not sure he'd be able to actually do it in reality. For one thing, he'd almost certainly lose his next primary, so it would be a short-term solution, but if he's lost the Speakership anyway that might be better than the alternatives. As for the latter, they'd also definitely lose their next primaries, so I doubt it would be possible. And I honestly doubt the Democrats will be creative enough to think of it, although if there's one Democrat who might be it's definitely Nancy Pelosi. Still, I think it would be a pretty effective strategy to mess with the Republicans and maybe, just maybe, make it possible to get an act of legislation through the Chamber. The only alternative, I think, is just pure, unremitting chaos as soon as the insurgent faction get a majority of their caucus. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening right now.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
The Leads Tiger Has Almost Held
The third round of the 2013 British Open Championship just concluded, and it concluded with a late stumble by Tiger Woods. He had played very steady golf all day, sprinkling in a birdie here to counterbalance a bogey there, while Lee Westwood surged and fell back; at one point Westwood had a three-shot lead open in about a fifteen-minute span which he then lost in the next half-hour. But after a Westwood bogey on 16, which featured a great putt holed just to salvage the bogey, the par-5 17th hole proved a bit of a turning-point. Playing into the wind, Tiger failed to get his fairway wood lay-up shot over the cross-bunkers, and had to pitch out. He and Westwood both hit to the fringe just left of the back-left pin, but with Westwood lying three to Tiger's four. Tiger missed, Westwood drained it, and all of a sudden Lee had a two-shot lead and Tiger wasn't going to be in the final group tomorrow any more.
And he wasn't going to hold a share of the lead.
That bit is the crucial bit, or, well, so we're told. Famously, in each of his fourteen major championship victories Tiger has at least been tied for the lead after three rounds. The stat was even stronger before the 2009 PGA Championship, when it was an if-and-only-if proposition: all fourteen times Tiger had held the 54-hole lead, he won, and he had never won without holding the lead. Then, of course, he held the 54-hole lead at Hazeltine National but lost the tournament to Y.E. Yang. In retrospect that was the beginning of his decline. And now he has a chance to break it. The television coverage was discussing his highest positions through three rounds of a major since his last win at the 2008 U.S. Open. Obviously Hazeltine, where he was leading outright, was his best position, but he's been in the top five a few other times. He's tied for second now, but even more important, I think, is the indicator given by a personally-invented stat of mine, Total Shots Trailing. This is a very simple concept: for every player ahead of you in the field, you add the number of shots by which you are behind them at any given point. Today, for instance, Tiger finds himself tied for second, so there's only one person ahead of him, and that person is Lee Westwood, whom he trails by 2 shots, so his TST is 2. I feel like this metric does a good job of combining the information contained in "he's X shots off the lead" with the information in "he's in a tie for Yth place," and though I haven't seen any large-scale empirical studies on the subject I imagine it does a good job predicting how plausible a player's comeback is.
To get a bit of a sense of how Tiger's done when he's been incredibly close to the lead with 18 holes to go in a major but wasn't leading himself, I examined every major he's played as a professional when his 54-hole TST was less than 10 strokes, obviously excluding the ones where he won the tournament. Actually I haven't done the examining yet, just generated the list, so I'm as curious as you are what I'll find, or probably more curious, actually, since it was my idea in the first place. Tournaments will be listed in descending order of Tiger's TST, so starting with the 9-shotters if there are any and finishing up with those where he was in the best non-leading position possible.
And he wasn't going to hold a share of the lead.
That bit is the crucial bit, or, well, so we're told. Famously, in each of his fourteen major championship victories Tiger has at least been tied for the lead after three rounds. The stat was even stronger before the 2009 PGA Championship, when it was an if-and-only-if proposition: all fourteen times Tiger had held the 54-hole lead, he won, and he had never won without holding the lead. Then, of course, he held the 54-hole lead at Hazeltine National but lost the tournament to Y.E. Yang. In retrospect that was the beginning of his decline. And now he has a chance to break it. The television coverage was discussing his highest positions through three rounds of a major since his last win at the 2008 U.S. Open. Obviously Hazeltine, where he was leading outright, was his best position, but he's been in the top five a few other times. He's tied for second now, but even more important, I think, is the indicator given by a personally-invented stat of mine, Total Shots Trailing. This is a very simple concept: for every player ahead of you in the field, you add the number of shots by which you are behind them at any given point. Today, for instance, Tiger finds himself tied for second, so there's only one person ahead of him, and that person is Lee Westwood, whom he trails by 2 shots, so his TST is 2. I feel like this metric does a good job of combining the information contained in "he's X shots off the lead" with the information in "he's in a tie for Yth place," and though I haven't seen any large-scale empirical studies on the subject I imagine it does a good job predicting how plausible a player's comeback is.
To get a bit of a sense of how Tiger's done when he's been incredibly close to the lead with 18 holes to go in a major but wasn't leading himself, I examined every major he's played as a professional when his 54-hole TST was less than 10 strokes, obviously excluding the ones where he won the tournament. Actually I haven't done the examining yet, just generated the list, so I'm as curious as you are what I'll find, or probably more curious, actually, since it was my idea in the first place. Tournaments will be listed in descending order of Tiger's TST, so starting with the 9-shotters if there are any and finishing up with those where he was in the best non-leading position possible.
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