OOTP at 538

jazzrack · 06-07-2017, 02:11 PM

doing my normal daily reading and I notice a story at 538 about ryan howard's career being ruined by the shift (or more accurately, his refusal to adapt to the shift ruined his career, but I digress) when I can across this gem

Quote:

We can never know the true toll the shift exacted on Howard’s production, but we can estimate it: I asked the makers of a simulation game called Out Of The Park Baseball to create a version of MLB without the shift. (Just imagine a universe in which baseball commissioner Rob Manfred managed to outlaw the tactic.) Then I had them replay Howard’s career three times, starting from 2009,3 to get a range of outcomes for his final résumé.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features.../?ex_cid=538fb

it's not a story I would have normally clicked on, so it must be fate or something

pgjocki · 06-07-2017, 05:39 PM

Biggest takeaway is that Howard thought his talent would prevail and ignored/refused to put in the hard work required to be great.

He wasn't the first and won't be the last athlete to claim that title either.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

BBGiovanni · 06-07-2017, 07:39 PM

I thought it was great to see OOTP mentioned.

I thought the article was defective; they lost sight of the forest for the spreadsheets. They determined that he hit worse into shifts than out of. But basically no one used the shift until about the time he blew out his achilles and (basically) never recovered from that point. I'd think that kind of basic factor should have been mentioned before they concluded that the shift ruined him and not just age/injury.

06-07-2017, 05:39 PM	#2
pgjocki All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Maryland - just outside DC Posts: 1,581	Biggest takeaway is that Howard thought his talent would prevail and ignored/refused to put in the hard work required to be great. He wasn't the first and won't be the last athlete to claim that title either. Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk __________________ - - - World Series championships: 1926, 1931, 1934, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006, 2011

06-07-2017, 07:39 PM	#3
BBGiovanni All Star Starter Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Republic of California Posts: 1,874	I thought it was great to see OOTP mentioned. I thought the article was defective; they lost sight of the forest for the spreadsheets. They determined that he hit worse into shifts than out of. But basically no one used the shift until about the time he blew out his achilles and (basically) never recovered from that point. I'd think that kind of basic factor should have been mentioned before they concluded that the shift ruined him and not just age/injury.