Bobby Cox gets 1800th win

[Malleus Dei]

Ah, you misunderstand; I was trying to teach the principles of objectivism and analysis to some heretic Relativists, which is an impossible task, and it took me a while to realize it.

This wasn't a debate for me. I was actively trying to teach you guys something. Some of you - not all of you, just some - are, however, incapable of ever learning it and further discussion is pointless.

If any of you feel flamed, my apologies, as I was trying very hard not to personally flame anyone. Not all of you are Relativists; for those of you who are Relativists, I am not angry at you. I feel pity for you, along contempt for whoever it was who filled your head with Relativism.

There are measurable entities and absolute truths in this world and they can be found/revealed/discovered by rigorous investigation, and not all opinions are equal. Without such things as a basis neither this discussion nor any like it can be rationally held, nor can such professions as science and engineering be practiced. There has to be objective common ground, and the "all opinions are equal" of Relativism prevents that.

This also explains several things. The board changed dramatically over the years and now I know what happened in that transition -as the board lost some of its better analysts (viewed by the Relativists as masters of arrogance and constantly attacked) and as it acquired a number of Relativsts it changed in nature. Looking back, the reasons that a number of the more experienced people left make more sense, and a number of statements that have been posted in the past by Relativists that seemed to be just incredibly stupid and/or ignorant at the time now also make sense. Additionally, the frustration I have felt trying to explain simple things to some of you that some of you just never seemed to get now makes me laugh; I always thought that if I could just be clearer or more forceful with the truth it would get through, but these things were things that you could never get. Much of the frustration you felt with me is also obvious; since to some of you with advanced cases of Relativism, here was some guy trying to force you to view things in a manner that you didn't understand, didn't like, and would never accept. I frankly thought that some of you were extremely stupid; it's really quite a relief to know you were just badly taught instead.

The surprise here is that I am going to stop trying to convince you people of things. There is no point to it now. Also, there really is no point flaming me. I realize that some of you won't be able to understand this and will therefore try to manufacture your own insulting explanations - I see some of them, both wrong and amusing, above already - but there really isn't a point to that either.

And I really do hope that you all have a nice day.

[GForce22]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Ah, you misunderstand; I was trying to teach the principles of objectivism and analysis to some heretic Relativists, which is an impossible task, and it took me a while to realize it.

This wasn't a debate for me. I was actively trying to teach you guys something

Ah, that is what you misunderstand. You are unqualified to teach anybody anything. Trying to teach you that fact (not opinion) is an impossible task, and it took us a while to realize it.

GH

[spleen1015]

Man, I long for the days when you're a distant memory in this community, like your little buddy Tris. This place will be so much better.

[angry_malkie]

A summary of Mal's last post: "You're all morons, I'm very smart. The fact that you don't agree only serves to prove my point."

I've read a lot of your posts Malleus, some of them have been very interesting, and very helpful to me. But whenever you get into an argument with someone, you always seem to revert to the same stance "I'm right, i'll always be right, you're a moron, leave me alone now" You try to mask that, but i've never seen you succeed...

I understand it's a veryhard thing to do - to admit you're clearly wrong, but if you do it once, just ONCE, you'll be a better person.

And i really do hope that you have a nice day.

[SoxWin]

Guys, step back and think for a minute, all of you.

This thread went for 6 or 7 pages with no flames and some very good conversation.

Why start flaming now? It seems as soon as one of you bash MD, the rest chime in.

Uncalled for IMO. (This opinion is worth what you paid for it)

Cheers

Rich

[GForce22]

Rich,

A lot of is because Mal of being borderline civil for the majority of the thread. Mal and I disagreed with each other in this thread, as we do often, but were able to keep it civil for the most part. He was condescending at times yes, but that's just him. Someone took issue with his comments and mannerisms at the end (with no name calling) and Mal responded by saying he needed to teach us and that he thought we were all stupid. That's when people jumped on him, and they have every right to.
Mal says a lot of things and treats people in a way on here that would get his face smashed in if he treated many, myself included, like that in person.

GH

[Malleus Dei]

Ah, more pathetic flames. Tsk, tsk. Really.

You can all relax. I won't be arguing with you in the future as you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. My unit also just go pre-activated, so I will be busy teaching other people useful things like physical fitness and close combat. I'll still be around here in the future, just not nearly as much. That ought to cheer some of you up considerably.

Have a nice day.

[Malleus Dei]

BTW, Gforce22, I'm just like this in real life and never have got my "face smashed"; in fact, I am undefeated in real-life hand-to-hand combat, with only one draw. This is not to say that over the years some of my instructors didn't bounce me off of the ground and various floors and walls (and even through a wall once as well when we were doing full contact in body armor), but if someone's face is going to get smashed in real life, I am sorry to tell you that it certainly won't be mine.

Have a nice day.

[JAttractive]

You have rubbed me the wrong way from time to time here Malleus but so do many people that I call "friends" in real life. Conversely some of the guys I know in real life, that I consider my closest friends, for some reason I want to murder when I see their posts on message boards... they just don't come across like they do person to person.

What I am getting at is that you are clearly an intelligent guy who seems to be a decent family man to boot from your posts. You are probably the type of guy I would enjoy going to a ballgame with in real life and talking about it. I am sure you could teach me a ton of things.

So putting our petty differences aside I wish you the best with this.

[Modern Relic]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Ah, more pathetic flames. Tsk, tsk. Really.

You can all relax. I won't be arguing with you in the future as you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. considerably.

Oh good grief, you just never stop do you? Seriously Mal, I've tried to see your side through a long time on this board, beginning with support for your position on the infamous printing isue. But you really are too much.

For someone as "supposedly" intelligent as you, I find it difficult to believe that you really can't see why you stir up so much trouble here.

I've refrained from criticism of you because I agree with you much of the time. But your constant, towering arrogance has made it so I now hate to find myself in such agreement. You've got so few "friends" here due to your constant ability to alienate even those who think you're right. What does that accomplish? Nothing.

Whatever you may think, you're NOT the smartest man in the world. Constantly proclaiming your superiority to everyone here is just ridiculous and frankly, quite immature.

You find anyone who disagrees with you to be "wanting". Give me a break. You sir, whether you're right or wrong, are the very definition of the word "ässhole". But that's not the first time you've heard that in your life, is it?

And it's also great to know that you're as physically superior as you are mentally.

Congratulations for turning yet another of your allies against you. But if I had to, I'd guess that fact doesn't bother you in the least.

Have a nice life.

[Red Blow]

People sometimes take things such as Win Shares as gospel the second a famous name, in this case Bill James, is attached to it. Bill James is famous, isn't he?

Research it. Investigate it. Don't accept it blindly.

In an introduction to win shares, presumably written by Bill James himself, he can't even effectively explain why he multiplies wins created by three to get win shares. He admits multiplying by 2 or 4 would work, whereas mulitplying by 1 or 10 would not. Now, this looks to be a pretty exact science, so pay close attention. The magic number to remember is not 1,2,3,4 or 10, though. It is 45... but I will get to that a little later.

He mentions that the basis for win shares is runs created. Runs created is another "scientific" formula whereby you take "...the singles, doubles, triples, walks, etc. for each hitter and estimate from that how many runs the player has created."

Estimate.

So Runs Created is an estimate.... and Win Shares is an estimate times three (or two or four...but not one or ten). Now there's some science that I could do. "Hey, Bill, how many cells on that slide over yonder?"

"Oh, about a billion, Red."

"Ok, lesse.... I've got three slides total... so that would make... ten... no...three billion... got it."

Yes, yes, I am making light.... and I have never even been in hand to hand combat. Bill answers his own question of why he uses 3 as the magic number for turning runs created into win shares (so he can thereby quantify and then rank all players who ever existed) in this way.... "because it works."

Seriously... that is the conclusion.... here is the exact quote...

"We use three to one because three to one is an interval that works. Two to one would work, I guess; Four to one would work. Ten to one doesn't work, and one to one doesn't work."

In other words... We're good with three; Two or four would work ok, but one and ten are right out. Man, and here I thought the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch bit was funny.....

Ok then... why does it work? You weren't listening. Because Bill James says it works... that's why.

Don't get me wrong... that actually sounds good to me. I mean, if Bill says it works, I guess it does. He is, after all, Bill James. He writes Internet and magazine articles, he is widely quoted, and he writes books.

Oh yes... the books he writes. He sells those, doesn't he?

This one, the new Historical Baseball Abstract, sells for $45.

That's all the magic you need to know.

[Jason Moyer]

Originally posted by Red Blow
In an introduction to win shares, presumably written by Bill James himself, he can't even effectively explain why he multiplies wins created by three to get win shares.

The reason he does it is to give the final numbers some sort of magnitude. A guy putting up 45 win shares versus a guy putting up 21 win shares for instance, is a pretty large gap in terms of that player's contributions. If you express it in terms of wins, however, it's just 15 to 7. Not nearly as impressive.

It doesn't matter whether you use 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 times wins in order to do the calculations, all it does is change the magnitude of the final result straight across the board. It doesn't have any other effect whatsoever on the underlying calculations.

He mentions that the basis for win shares is runs created. Runs created is another "scientific" formula whereby you take "...the singles, doubles, triples, walks, etc. for each hitter and estimate from that how many runs the player has created."

That's if you're using the simplified runs created formula, which gets close enough in most cases that most people don't bother using his real formula. The simplified formula is hits plus walks, times total bases, divided by plate appearances, equals runs. To quote James:

On a team level, this formula works pretty well. It ignores stolen bases and caught stealing, it ignores hit batsmen and grounding into double plays, it ignores clutch hitting, it ignores strikeouts, and it ignores many other things even smaller or more elusive, but it still works - in a general way. Pick any team, figure their runs created by the formula above, and their actual runs scored will be usually be within 5% of this estimate.

The actual full runs created formula is significantly more complicated and much more reliable. The formula that you see quoted on ESPN or used in most if not all computer games is the estimate formula. There are 62 steps to calculating a player's actual runs created, FWIW, and it involves every hard statistic that is tracked for a player during the season (offensively, of course).

So Runs Created is an estimate.... and Win Shares is an estimate times three (or two or four...but not one or ten). Now there's some science that I could do. "Hey, Bill, how many cells on that slide over yonder?"

If you actually were familiar with either the runs created or win shares methods you would realize the folly in the above statement. Win shares are not based on the estimated runs created formula, nor are they based around runs created period. Runs created are a part of the method, so are outs created, so are defensive runs saved, so are pitching runs saved, etc.

This is an extremely simplified summary of the system, for the sake of at least having a basic familiarity with it:

Start with team wins
Multiply times 3 (this is the team win shares)
Divide these between offense and defense
Divide the offensive shares between individual players
Divide the defensive win shares between pitching and defense
Divide the pitching win shares between individual pitchers
Divide the defensive win shares between individual positions on a team level
Divide each position's win shares between individual players

As you can see above, the 3 factor you seem obsessed with is nothing more than an order of magnitude. You could simply not multiply team wins by anything, and the end result would simply be smaller or larger numbers.

There are aspects of the system I disagree very strongly with, particularly in the area of defensive evaluation (or at least relative value across different positions - as far as players who play the same position, I find comparisons to be completely valid). I find fault in his use of 1.52 as the factor to determine marginal defensive runs, because it unnecessarily gives more credit to pitching and defense than they are due IMHO. Problems like this can and should be debated in order to make the system work better, and most of them were heavily refined with the help of people like Rob Neyer and other prominent sabermetricians long before the book went to press. Debating aspects of the system that bare no relevance on the reliability of the methods serves no purpose.

Win Shares passed through the hands of dozens of the nation's top baseball analysts for the ~5 years James was working on it, and has been given almost universal approval. At the present time, no system for player evaluation works better. It's not perfect, it can and should be made even better and will be thanks to people like Voros McCracken and others who are attempting to accurately determine the value of pitching versus defense.

Jason

[Red Blow]

Jason, it is obvious you believe what you are saying. The thought that a person can track every aspect of the game with numbers does more than confound me. I know there is a huge following of the Sabermetrics and Bill James types. Numbers and mathematics can prove a lot of things. Me, I like the human aspect of the game. The part that will absolutely never translate into whatever the latest acronym is. A person could go over the numbers all day long to tell me which player is better, but even those numbers are nothing more than an opinion when used in the context of baseball.

4+4=8 is a mathematical fact
40 win shares > 35 win shares is also a mathematical fact

Trying to state that the player with 40 win shares is better than the player with 35 win shares is, as you put it, folly. Numbers are static. Baseball, in the myriad of events than can happen each time a ball is let fly by a player, is not.

Statistics are useful, but can only go so far. They cannot tell you the importance or the impact of chemistry, grit, smart baserunning, clutch hitting (I like to call it smart hitting), luck, contract years, divorces, deaths, hot streaks, turf, baseball intelligence, preparation or the hundred or so other factors that do not come to mind while I write this.

If baseball, players or managers (that is what started this string) could be quantified like Bill James and the rest wish they could be then baseball would not be the great sport it is. It is the human side that makes baseball great. That side will never fit into a neat little equation.

The only way it could is if the players resembled your avatar.

[Sam Delulie]

Give him credit, Bobby Cox is and always will be the best current manager when he retires or not despite winning the world series in 1995 and losing the playoffs other he's won over 1800 games and deserves because he can get the most out of his general manager.

This is not NFL where you need to be great postseason but regular season matters as much because baseball is 162 games and deal with the long season can be tougher than to win playoffs.

On a side note, Bill James right on with his win shares and 62-step run crated formula.

[Jason Moyer]

Originally posted by Red Blow
If baseball, players or managers (that is what started this string) could be quantified like Bill James and the rest wish they could be then baseball would not be the great sport it is. It is the human side that makes baseball great. That side will never fit into a neat little equation.

The human side of baseball is incredibly important when it comes to judging players (heck, read the Baseball Abstract, less than 50% of what James writes involves stats). The problem I see with baseball, as opposed to sports like Football or Hockey, is that so much of the game is based around individual performance in a team context, and is easily accountable for by statistics.

Just as an example, you and I both know that Jose Canseco was an amazing power hitter. Anyone who saw the 600 foot bomb he hit in the Skydome in the playoffs knows it. I'm sure Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, etc were all had their jaw gaping at some of the bombs he hit in his career.

But, at the same time, enough statistics are tracked in baseball that we can see pretty clearly that in terms of his teams winning ballgames, he was less of a factor than most of us give him credit for. We can take the human side, the huge bombs, the off field distractions, the iron glove, and see those traits reflected in his statistics. It sucks that a player's contributions to his team can be so easily quantified, but that's one of the beautiful things about baseball IMHO. Baseball scorekeeping is so far ahead of other sports that it is possible to hold every player accountable for every thing they do on the baseball field.

That doesn't mean that we should stop talking about the game in human terms. The human side is ultimately what draws people, myself included, to the game. Sure maybe Nolan Ryan was overrated as a pitcher in terms of what he actually accomplished, but geeze did have a great fastball. Stats play a big role in baseball because you can hold people accountable for everything, but at the same time it's entertainment and you can't lose sight of that. I'm all for putting guys in the hall of fame who don't put up huge numbers but are out there hustling and giving their all 100% of the time. I'm all for putting the entertaining guys in there, and the guys who grab the headlines, however undeserving they may be based on their performance.

I guess the way I see it, stats are just a means of measuring how well a player or field manager or executive is performing his job in terms of producing wins. However the joy of the game is still watching Lenny Dykstra get his uniform dirty before the game even starts. Or watching Larry Bowa, as bad of a manager as he is, scream obscenities at a bewildered umpire.

Jason

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Ah, more pathetic flames. Tsk, tsk. Really.

You can all relax. I won't be arguing with you in the future as you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. My unit also just go pre-activated, so I will be busy teaching other people useful things like physical fitness and close combat. I'll still be around here in the future, just not nearly as much. That ought to cheer some of you up considerably.

Have a nice day.

I won't miss your arrogant attitude. Saying that you are the smartest or most physically superior person on this board is idiotic - I can only hope one day you are brought back down to earth, and realize you are worth nothing more than anyone else here.

Your only friends here are your (many) aliases. Good luck trying to "teach" the rest of the "inferior" world how to think and act exactly like you, and have a nice day yourself.

[GForce22]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
BTW, Gforce22, I'm just like this in real life and never have got my "face smashed"; in fact, I am undefeated in real-life hand-to-hand combat, with only one draw. This is not to say that over the years some of my instructors didn't bounce me off of the ground and various floors and walls (and even through a wall once as well when we were doing full contact in body armor), but if someone's face is going to get smashed in real life, I am sorry to tell you that it certainly won't be mine.

Have a nice day.

Awwww...you came back after your last post just to try and puff your chest out towards me. I'm touched you hold me in such high value that you continue to respond to me after countless times saying you never would do so again.
I love watching you continue to try to create this wonderful image of yourself, Mal. It makes for fun fiction.

See ya, Jester.

GH

[Kezzek]

Mal, times like this it's just best to follow the advice of that wise old gambler/philosopher, Kenny Rogers (the, uh, singer not the pitcher.)

..."Islands in the stream...that is what we are"---

Oops! I mean...

"Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away."

I think you've taken a bad track these last few replies.

See ya next thread and let's keep it insult free (MD and everyone),

[GForce22]

I will lay good odds that a thread won't get locked until Mal returns.

GH

[spleen1015]

What are the odds that he won't come back?