A few Tuesday links
November 26th, 2007 | Published in baseball, blogging, links | 6 Comments
Still working on that project for school I mentioned .. I’ll have more time late this week. In the meantime, here are a few random links.
Brock’s Mailbag - Sounds like he thinks Headley may go to left if that situation presents itself.
Rethinking the MVP - Shameless self promotion here. Anyway, I think the writers are not so off base with the Rollins selection. Bloggers/statheads have to step back and look at things in a different perspective sometimes.
Jimmy Rollins - Tango’s thread that made me think a little more about the subject. For what it’s worth, I don’t really care about any of these awards anymore. Most bloggers I read seem to not really care either, but just use them to rip the writers. I’m not sure that’s an interesting (or even correct) approach anymore.
Conlin’s Losing Numbers - Just another case of bloggers vs. sportswriters here. Conlin made some ridiculous statements that are inexcusable … but linking to the fire joe morgan entry in the email probably was not necessary either. You’d certainly like to see a writer handle himself better and ignore the link as the rest of the email was not bad. At the same time, I don’t think bloggers can have it both ways … that is, they can’t criticise these guys in a somewhat childish, immature way (which I’m sure I’ve done before) and then get pissed when they give it right back. The fact that I’m not sure I disagree with the Rollins selection makes this one worse for bloggers. Then again, Conlin’s tone in the entire exchange was pretty unreasonable and out of line, as well …. nobody wins here, I guess.
Couple of long threads at BTF on the issue: one; two
Probably much ado about nothing, but if you’ve got some free time, it’s some interesting/entertaining stuff, I suppose.
November 27th, 2007 at 7:11 pm (#)
[...] a blogger and longtime Philadelphia columnist Bill Conlin regarding the NL MVP race (hat tip Friar Forecast); just goes to show the divide between the sportswriters and the bloggers is as wide as ever. As a [...]
November 28th, 2007 at 8:57 am (#)
Thanks for the Conlin link; that is hilarious. The problem with both sides is that by and large, folks are speaking too much in generalities — bloggers this, journalists that — instead of addressing one another on a personal level. There are people on both sides of the “fence” that are doing good work, just as there are people on both sides doing crap work. That’s pretty much the way it is with most subsets of humans.
As for Rollins, I think he was a poor choice for MVP, but as you say, even berating the voters gets old after a while. Still, it has to be done because someone has to hold them accountable.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:05 pm (#)
Welcome back, Geoff … hope you had a good vacation : )
I wish I could have put it the way you put it in your first paragraph there. Certainly there are good bloggers, good writers, etc … I can never understand when a writer says things like “bloggers steal content, don’t give credit to sources, can’t write” etc. Like you say, they are speaking in generalities. It’s probably true in some cases and it’s 100% false in many others. Same thing goes for bloggers who despise sportswriters for whatever reasons.
Regarding Rollins, I actually don’t mind the selection. My “rethinking the mvp” post there kind of sums up my thoughts, but basically Rollins got a lot of timely hits and that indeed should count positively for him, imo. The context neutral stuff (like VORP, WARP, OPS, EqA, linear weights, etc) counts everything the same without considering base configuration, game state, timeliness, etc .. hence, context neutrality.
I’m certainly willing to accept other opinions on how to award the MVP, but under “my” guidelines, I don’t think the Rollins selection is way off base.
Conlin’s initial article is not horrible, besides a few snarky comments about range factor, and probably didn’t deserve the backlash that it got. Then again, personally I’d never treat a reader of this blog in the way he did, even if they were way out of line (and the crashburn guy wasn’t at all, besides the link, which I didn’t think was necessary). And he did say some indefensible things. So … I don’t know. Sometimes the writer/blogger back and forth hatred gets old, although I think it’s a fascinating subject overall.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:09 pm (#)
Nice analysis on Cameron clutchiness or lack there of.
I love the fangraph as a tool to see how big a contribution a player makes throughout the season. I love that Jake’s number was amazing last season and he got the CY for that.
Yeah, the whole clutchiness is very fudgy and unclear, and it’s interesting to me that people are still using that even if the term has been proven to be wrong.
Keep up the good work, man. Thanks again.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:47 am (#)
Hey Didi, thank YOU for always dropping in with insightful comments.
I’m always afraid to rush to judgments, even after the issue has been studied a ton, but surely at this point I don’t really believe clutch hitters exist. And when they do, on average, they don’t add that much value anyway.
I guess people will always believe they exist because they remember big hits and associate them with a guy, and then forget all the times he failed in big spots.
FWIW (not much), when I tried out for a baseball team, I didn’t try any harder when I had a 1st and 3rd situation late in the game, then when I was up with nobody on in the second. I was just doing all I could to make some good contact. I don’t know, maybe major leaguers have a different approach.
December 9th, 2007 at 5:36 pm (#)
[...] Conlin’s Losing Numbers (crashburn alley via 322 feet, and FriarForecast) [...]