Historical musts for OOTP 16

[RchW]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I think you're confusing correlation and causation here. I'd say it's much less likely that high turnover led to bad teams and much more likely that bad teams led to high turnover. After all, bad teams are composed of bad players, and bad players tend to have shorter careers than good players. Thus, there's higher turnover among bad players than good players, and so there's necessarily higher turnover among bad teams, which have more bad players, than among good teams. It certainly seems counterintuitive to suggest that bad teams would get better if they could only hold onto their bad players longer.

My point exactly. But Carlton ignoring people doesn't say much about a willingness to exchange ideas.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

It's possible to do a rudimentary test of this hypothesis by comparing the total number of players which played in one or more games for a club during a season to that club's final record.

Not really. I mean, if you were to show no correlation that might disprove it but I suspect there is a correlation. The issue here is time order: bad teams use more players than good ones because they aren't as interested in optimizing their roster to win games. I'm not sure how you would control for that, as it seems to be intrinsically linked to wins and losses.

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I'm not going to dispute your figures, but I guess I don't understand your logic here. You started out by saying that managers held back some of their pitchers so that they pitched either against good teams or against bad teams. In Grove's case, you use IP to argue that Grove didn't pitch against the Yankees, but you also say that he didn't pitch well against the Yankees when he did pitch. Well, as I see it, that could mean that Grove didn't get a lot of IP against the Yanks because he got pulled from those games because he was being shelled, not because he was being held back.

The better metric is probably how many games he started against 1st division teams, not how many innings he pitched against them. In 1930, he started only twice against the Yanks, but those also happened to be his first two starts of the season, so it doesn't look like Mack was holding him back, at least not initially. But we need to remember that NY didn't finish second that year - Washington did, and Grove started 5 times against the Senators. He also had 5 starts against Cleveland, which means that, of his 32 starts, 12 came against 1st division teams, which is about what one would expect just from a random distribution. And Grove probably lost a start in the last series of the year -- against NY -- because Mack was resting him so that he could start the first game of the world series.

So I'm not convinced, just by looking at Grove's stats, that Mack held him back from 1st division teams. He may very well have held him back from pitching against NY, but then, if you're right that Grove didn't have any success against the Yankees, I wouldn't have blamed him if he did. That doesn't mean that there was a two-tier ranking among the pitchers, it just means that some pitchers pitch well against some teams and not so well against others. Grove was 2-1 with 3 saves against Washington, which was the team that the A's had to beat to win the pennant, so I don't think he was being held back just so he could pad his stats against bad clubs.

If you don't believe it, that's fine,

I showed the stats, there are documented issues of his sulking, whether you take it in is not my concern. I stated my opinion on Grove using stats to back it up, it is not life or death if you want to think he's great. I don't think he is...end of this conversation, on my end.

This thread has been taken off track...

LEVERAGING is what I'd like to see

SOME managers liked to throw their main P vs the strongest teams in their league, and throwing what amounted to their #3 and #4 SP against the 2nd division.

I'd LIKE to see it in the game

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I think you're confusing correlation and causation here. I'd say it's much less likely that high turnover led to bad teams and much more likely that bad teams led to high turnover. After all, bad teams are composed of bad players, and bad players tend to have shorter careers than good players. Thus, there's higher turnover among bad players than good players, and so there's necessarily higher turnover among bad teams, which have more bad players, than among good teams. It certainly seems counterintuitive to suggest that bad teams would get better if they could only hold onto their bad players longer.

It happened so many times in baseball history that I am not wasting energy pointing out more examples

You took my words and spun them to fix whatever point you are trying to make which is off the tracks, off the county, off the state line of my point.

Teams staying together have a better chemistry, IF the players have a good personality....if you don't use personality, chemistry will NOT be on.
It won't make bad players and teams better, it would make good teams better than other comparable teams and bad teams better than comparable teams.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Carlton

If you don't believe it, that's fine,

I showed the stats, there are documented issues of his sulking, whether you take it in is not my concern. I stated my opinion on Grove using stats to back it up, it is not life or death if you want to think he's great. I don't think he is...end of this conversation, on my end.

This thread has been taken off track...

No, not really. You said that managers used pitchers in a certain way, and you used Grove as an example of that. But the numbers don't really bear you out, and if you're now saying that Grove took himself out of games against competitive teams, that provides evidence against your argument, wouldn't you agree? I mean, if Mack wanted Grove to pitch against the Yankees but Grove refused, then that means that Mack didn't "leverage" his rotation - he just had a moody superstar.

Originally Posted by Carlton

LEVERAGING is what I'd like to see

SOME managers liked to throw their main P vs the strongest teams in their league, and throwing what amounted to their #3 and #4 SP against the 2nd division.

I'd LIKE to see it in the game

The human player can do that now, so I presume you want the AI to do that as well. But how could that be coded? Manipulating the rotation can be tricky even for a human player. How would you suggest "nudging" the AI so that it matched up its best pitchers against its toughest opponents?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Carlton

It happened so many times in baseball history that I am not wasting energy pointing out more examples

You may have lots of examples of correlation, but what you don't have is an example of causation. That was my point.

Originally Posted by Carlton

Teams staying together have a better chemistry, IF the players have a good personality....if you don't use personality, chemistry will NOT be on.
It won't make bad players and teams better, it would make good teams better than other comparable teams and bad teams better than comparable teams.

In your above statement, the term "chemistry" can be replaced by "fairy godmother" and it would have the same explanatory force. Thus: "teams staying together have a better chemistry" is the equivalent of saying "teams staying together have a better fairy godmother." In other words, it's a meaningless term.

I've explained my position on team "chemistry" elsewhere on these boards and I won't belabor the point here. But since you have "many examples" of team chemistry, I challenge you to provide one example of a bad team with good chemistry.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Originally Posted by Carlton

Grove

Lefty Grove from 1929-1931 pitched:

140.2 innings against Boston.
140.1 innings against Cleveland.
138.2 innings against Detroit.
125.2 innings against Washington.
124.1 innings against Chicago.
104.1 innings against St. Louis.

and

72 innings versus the New York Yankees. and a 4.86 ERA

SEVENTY TWO

in 1930 alone

1. 16.2 innings against NY.
2. 46.2 innings against Washington.
3. 48.0 innings against Cleveland.
4. 56.0 innings against Detroit.
5. 34.1 innings against StL.
6. 35.2 innings against Chicago.
7. 53.2 innings against Boston.

in 1928 when he DID face the Yankees and their Lefty power he stunk...went 1-6 and I can't recall the ERA think it was high 6's

While Mordecai Brown faced the Giants and Pirates about 10 times a year while facing the Braves and Phillies less than 5


Sorry CPB, you need to rethink your stance on Grove, he was vastly over rated. I do think he is top 20, but many put him in the top 10 and I strongly disagree. He was also a sulker, sometimes leaving the team for weeks after a bad game and I don't like those people on principal.

You know, yes, we get it, you don't like Lefty Grove, he was surly, you never met him, move on. And yes, this thread is off the rails. But come on man, I think it's you who's not seeing the big picture here on Grove. According to actual stats, not ones you selectively pick from the first several years of his career, Grove performed rather well in regards to the rest of the league versus the Yankees of the 20's and 30's. How many other pitchers performed at a .576 winning percentage against them. The 59 decisions is right in line with his decisions against other teams. Versus the Browns, the numbers skew higher, but I'm sure most pitchers numbers did versus St. Louis, in the same way they went south versus the Yankees. Sorry man, I'm just not seeing it your way and as they say about opinions, but I think numbers historically along with the opinions of thousands of actual baseball experts might be a tad bit more compelling regarding Lefty.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Not really. I mean, if you were to show no correlation that might disprove it but I suspect there is a correlation. The issue here is time order: bad teams use more players than good ones because they aren't as interested in optimizing their roster to win games. I'm not sure how you would control for that, as it seems to be intrinsically linked to wins and losses.

Lacking any such analysis, we are all just guessing what the results would be, aren't we?


ETA: I've already got an Excel file which lists the total number of players which appeared on each major league club during a season. But I'd have to merge that data with one containing the records for each club each season. And I just don't feel like doing that work at the present. :P

[ra7c7er]

I'm really unsure how this whole thread came down to lefty grove.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I'm really unsure how this whole thread came down to lefty grove.

Everything comes down to Lefty Grove.

Well, okay, not everything, but it was an easy line.

[TribeFanInNC]

Yes, it is odd where these threads go...but that's what makes life interesting.

I'm surprised nobody even brought up the fact that Lefty Grove didn't even have to face the best offense in the league for a portion of his career...his own team (yes, certainly the Yankees were good too...).

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I'm really unsure how this whole thread came down to lefty grove.

Because Carlton used Grove as an example of a pitcher who was used primarily against weaker opponents. The discussion, therefore, shouldn't be about Lefty Grove, it should be about Connie Mack and the way he used pitchers. But the statistics don't support Carlton's argument that managers like Mack "leveraged" their pitching staffs so that some pitchers faced tough opponents while others (like Grove) faced the weak ones.

In addition, although I haven't looked closely at Three Finger Brown's record, I would note that, in the most important game of the 1908 regular season - the make-up game against the Giants that determined the pennant - Frank Chance started Jack Pfiester, not Brown, even though Brown was rested (and would pitch in that game as a reliever).

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I'm really unsure how this whole thread came down to lefty grove.

Going into why some people here always take the contrarian view against me when it comes to any post I create would be a sociological experiment. It's weird how some people can hold a grudge from unrelated topics. You can find threads similar to my own and there is not the animosity that you see here.

Anyway, I could go and spend 45 minutes using statistical analysis to prove those people and the others wrong. However, my experience is that all it does is waste my time and they hold on tighter to that grudge and dislike me even more. That's a "them" problem and shows their character.
But for my last post for the few who are open minded...

http://www.amazon.com/Evaluating-Bas.../dp/0786439203

That is a great book to read on managers and pitching leveraging, which happened, I've spent way too much time on 19th century and deadball era baseball to sit here and accept others "uh uh, no it didn't" counterpoints.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Carlton

Going into why some people here always take the contrarian view against me when it comes to any post I create would be a sociological experiment. It's weird how some people can hold a grudge from unrelated topics.

Two responses:

(1) Paranoid much?

(2) It's interesting to note that one possibility you haven't apparently considered as to why there are posts disagreeing with your positions: they disagree with your position because you have not as yet made a sufficiently compelling case.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Everything comes down to Lefty Grove.

Well, okay, not everything, but it was an easy line.

A better example would be Whitey Ford who faced the top teams and not the Senators and A's. There is a good bit of analysis out there to support Stengel's stated strategy.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Er, the Yankees have historically been among the clubs with the highest payroll, which would indicate its players were paid better on average than other clubs.

According to MLB's own figures, for the selected seasons of 1929, 1933, 1939, 1943, 1946, and 1950, the Yankees had the highest payroll in the majors in all but the 1946 season, when the Red Sox had the highest. From 1952-56, the Yankees had the highest payroll twice, in 1954 and 1956; for the other three seasons the Indians had the highest.

Unusually for you, you are missing the real point here. While the Yankees had a high payroll for a baseball team, baseball salaries were still low enough that ordinary players had to find off season jobs to get through the winter. Bench warmers doubled their pay with WS shares in those days, so winning was a major economic payoff. Many Yankee veterans during the Stengel era planned on that money and anyone not pulling their weight was hounded. Dicking around threatened success and was not tolerated by the veterans. Hank Bauer was noted for this.

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

...But since you have "many examples" of team chemistry, I challenge you to provide one example of a bad team with good chemistry.

according to the Tennessean the 2014 Titans, currently 2-8 -82 point differential, are one big group of happy campers all putting in great practices and crap....

ain't saying I believe it but it is what they are saying. If true its even more embarrassing than the 2-8 record. No professional should be happy with such turrible results

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Kobeck

according to the Tennessean the 2014 Titans, currently 2-8 -82 point differential, are one big group of happy campers all putting in great practices and crap....

I don't doubt it. Jim Bouton made the 1969 Seattle Pilots sound like a fun bunch too. But "team chemistry" can't mean the same thing as "team happiness." If it did, then it would be truly redundant. After all, we already have a term for "happiness" -- it's called "happiness." Furthermore, advocates of "chemistry" argue that it not only reflects some sort of team group dynamic, but that it also explains why a team with "chemistry" is better than one without it. The mystery, then, is whether any bad team could have "chemistry," and how much better a bad team with "chemistry" is as opposed to a bad team without "chemistry."