I Am Mankiw, I Am Douche

Greg Mankiw writes (translated from the Bullshit):

"Recently I found myself desiring to highlight how important I am. I noticed people were talking about how this other professor disclaimed any interest in debating the stimulus, saying: 'all I know on this issue I got from Greg Mankiw's blog.' Gosh! Look how important I am! So I contrived a post that speculated the professor was being tongue in cheek -- fanciful of me, because hey, if I were someone else, I'd parrot me -- in order to draw further attention to my own large, throbbing intellect. It's rock hard, my intellect."

Pussy of the Day

Is Alex Rodriguez, for confining himself to a mea culpa, for not going after the player's union and the leakers, for not offering Peter Gammons to feel his testicles.

Updike

I cannot call myself an Updike fan, having read nothing of his other than a scattered few articles. What I can say is that he wrote beautifully about baseball; this is the article that has been getting a lot of play today. I particularly like this part:

"Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter's myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money."

I also could not help but notice his mention of attending school "near Boston". I suppose it should count as little surprise to see this particular prevalent instance of Harvadian false modesty should be so old, but it was nevertheless quite amusing.

I'd Like To Thank Truth, Beauty, Jack Bauer

The second annual

Primarily Baseball

award for

Excellence in Sportswriting Excellence

for the pursuit and achievement of excellence in sportswriting excellence

in the year of our Fucking God Damn Lord 2008

goes to Primarily Baseball.

This site, in its first full year of existence, brought trenchant analysis and unparalleled wit to baseball fans the world over. It gave no quarter to irrationality, intellectual dishonesty, and poor taste, and has them on the run, everywhere. It made the surge work and Sarah Palin lose. It kept the gravitational constants constant, so that mankind could live. Thank you, Primarily Baseball. Because if he can claim to have liberated 50 million people, you can claim them all.

A Christmas Coincidence

From Roch Kubatko:

"If anyone has taken the tour of Camden Yards, you've heard the story from the press box about Rosenthal's laptop being destroyed by a Cal Ripken foul ball. Rosenthal had written a column the night before suggesting that Ripken end The Streak. The screaming line drive that sent his laptop crashing to the floor was a delicious irony . . . . Ripken had no idea what happened until after the game, when former PR director John Maroon rushed to his locker with the news. Ripken's response went something like this: 'Cool.'"

A little math goes a long way

Over here, Colin Wyers, who is generally a smart guy, studies whether a run saved is just as valuable as a run scored.  He takes it to be an implication of the Pythagorean winning percentage formula (Win% = (RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2)) that this is indeed the case.  However, looking at teams with matched run differentials but widely differing total runs (so, for instance, a team with RS/RA allowed of 900/800 gets matched with a 750/650) he finds that the lower scoring teams do slightly, but statistically significantly better.  He takes this to imply some slight deficiency in the Pythagorean formula.

The problem is that he is completely wrong in his interpretation of the Pythagorean formula.  In fact, as I showed in one of my first posts here, according to the Pythagorean formula a run saved is more valuable when the team is an above average team, and a run scored more valuable when it is below average.  Thus, if there are more teams above .500 in his sample than below--which, if you look at the article, is indeed the case--the Pythagorean formula would predict that that the run saved is better than the run scored.  In other words, completely contrary to the article's claim, the Pythagorean formula correctly predicts the data!

To be fair, Colin does later present some additional evidence that Pythagorean estimators are less accurate for the low scoring teams.  That, however, does not make up for the earlier error.

Dog Puppet Is Superior To Ralph Nader

Highly superior.

When You Lie

It's sometimes better not to be high:

"But on the way to the exam, Ramirez, according to sources, couldn't remember which knee was sore. So the Red Sox had both of his knees examined. The MRIs revealed no damage in either."

TekWatch: Oh No You Didn't

Regarding Red Sox contract negotiations with Jason Varitek:

"Epstein and Scott Boras are far apart on Jason Varitek's monetary value. Boras is looking for a Jorge Posada-type deal (4 years, $52 million). The Sox are . . . "

. . . wondering whether Scott Boras is out of his fucking mind. A Jorge Posada-type deal? Not even Jorge Posada is worth that money. Varitek will be lucky to get 2 years, $16 million, in my view. Well, he would be. Because even to enter negotiations peddling such an insane fantasy is an insult to Theo Epstein, the Red Sox organization, Red Sox nation, unborn future fans, freedom, rationality, and global fucking god damn justice.

TekWatch: Working Class Hero Scott Boras Speaks Out

Jason Varitek's agent Scott Boras has begun to lay out the case that Tek is a valuable catcher. Pull up a chair, preferably with a solid back, and feel the bullshit seep into your pores:

"If you think about his physical conditioning, he's got many more years to play in this game," Boras said. "When he's out there, this club is decisively different. You're really talking about a guy that is inherently valuable. In this day and time, what is a player like that worth?"

Let's take these claims in turn.

If you think about his physical conditioning, he's got many more years to play in this game.

If I think about Curt Schilling's or Cecil Fielder's physical conditioning, those players should never have played the game. If I think about Barry Bonds's physical conditioning, Bonds should be DH'ing right now in the World Series. If, however, I think about actual baseball ability -- the, you know, important thing -- Jason Varitek's not looking so hot. After posting OPS+ numbers around 120 from 2003 to 2005, Tek sunk to 83 in 2006, 103 in 2007, and a miserable 73 this year, at age 36. That's good evidence he's on a serious and irreversable decline.

When he's out there, this club is decisively different.

Unprovable, but here's the evidence the Globe presented: "Over the past three seasons, including playoffs, the Red Sox have a .596 winning percentage in games in which Varitek has appeared and a .508 winning percentage when he did not. This season, the Red Sox went 78-53 with him in the regular season, 17-14 without him." Tek doesn't catch Tim Wakefield, who is the fourth or fifth starter on the Sox. And the catcher who replaces Tek is the backup, who ought to be worse than the alternative everyday player a team could get on the market. Demonstrated Tek effect: 0.

You're really talking about a guy that is inherently valuable.

Unclear what Boras has in mind that's not completely trivial. Jason Varitek, by virtue of being human, is endowed with instrinsic value? Maybe, but you'd have to square his entitlement to human rights with his lone hit in the ALCS, or his frequent swinging strikeouts in which bat and ball are separated by enough space to fit families of cattle from the Argentine pampas.

In this day and time, what is a player like that worth?

Put it this way: I'd start auctioning Tek's beard-clippings on eBay.