Dickerson not happy [Cincinnati Reds]

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From: John Kasupski on 2 Mar 2010 12:59

On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:31:52 -0800 (PST), RJA <agentvaughn(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>By silly rationalizations I mean the talk about who hit more home runs
>being a factor in who plays. If you look at what this team got out of
>their 1 and 2 hitters in terms of reaching base (bottom of the
>league), a smart manager would value a guy with a lifetime .383, at
>least while he's not on the DL.

You are judging Dusty Baker's intelligence according to the degree to which he
adheres (or to be more precise, does not adhere) to sabermetric principles,
which are principles that you - not he and not his boss - hold sacred.

That method of judgement is totally invalid. Not all managers have computers on
their desks and spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets and percentages.
Just because they probably wouldn't last any longer than I would in a room with
Bill James doesn't mean they haven't been successful managers nevertheless.

Dusty Baker's accomplishments as a major league manager include three Manager of
the Year awards, 1,314 wins, three division titles, and a National League
pennant. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

JK

From: RJA on 2 Mar 2010 13:41

On Mar 2, 12:59 pm, John Kasupski <w2...(a)spamfilter.verizon.net>
wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:31:52 -0800 (PST), RJA <agentvau...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >By silly rationalizations I mean the talk about who hit more home runs
> >being a factor in who plays. If you look at what this team got out of
> >their 1 and 2 hitters in terms of reaching base (bottom of the
> >league), a smart manager would value a guy with a lifetime .383, at
> >least while he's not on the DL.
>
> You are judging Dusty Baker's intelligence according to the degree to which he
> adheres (or to be more precise, does not adhere) to sabermetric principles,
> which are principles that you - not he and not his boss - hold sacred.

I don't believe that Walt Jocketty doesn't consider OBP at the top of
the order to be important. Dusty Baker on the other hand played a
couple guys with sub .300 OBPs in the leadoff spot so we know the
answer there.

> That method of judgement is totally invalid. Not all managers have computers on
> their desks and spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets and percentages.
> Just because they probably wouldn't last any longer than I would in a room with
> Bill James doesn't mean they haven't been successful managers nevertheless.

You're suggesting that managers don't need to look at percentages?
It's not like OBP is a sabermetric stat anyway. It gets lumped in
there because of its part in OPS. It's a measure of how often a
hitter reaches base or makes an out depending on which way you look at
it. It doesn't exactly require any thought or time to analyze. If
Dusty requires simplification, maybe we can provide him with a scale
that just says "high, medium, or low." Maybe an intern can summarize
it for him each day since he's so busy doing more important things
than trying to get the most out of his lineup.

> Dusty Baker's accomplishments as a major league manager include three Manager of
> the Year awards, 1,314 wins, three division titles, and a National League
> pennant. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

How much has he accomplished without a rhoid raging masher carrying
the team? He had one in both of his previous stops. Those guys made
up for a lot of boneheaded decisions.

From: Kommienezuspadt on 2 Mar 2010 14:07

"John Kasupski" <w2pio(a)spamfilter.verizon.net> wrote in message
news:t9gqo51pllpdkh56g07dc3gpurj6lulsev(a)4ax.com...
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:31:52 -0800 (PST), RJA <agentvaughn(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>By silly rationalizations I mean the talk about who hit more home runs
>>being a factor in who plays. If you look at what this team got out of
>>their 1 and 2 hitters in terms of reaching base (bottom of the
>>league), a smart manager would value a guy with a lifetime .383, at
>>least while he's not on the DL.
>
> You are judging Dusty Baker's intelligence according to the degree to
> which he
> adheres (or to be more precise, does not adhere) to sabermetric
> principles,
> which are principles that you - not he and not his boss - hold sacred.
>
> That method of judgement is totally invalid. Not all managers have
> computers on
> their desks and spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets and
> percentages.
> Just because they probably wouldn't last any longer than I would in a room
> with
> Bill James doesn't mean they haven't been successful managers
> nevertheless.
>

Just to be a smart *ss --- why does Dusty platoon or put a loogy in against
a lefty hitter --- if he does not look at percentages?

> Dusty Baker's accomplishments as a major league manager include three
> Manager of
> the Year awards, 1,314 wins, three division titles, and a National League
> pennant. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
>
> JK
>

From: John Kasupski on 2 Mar 2010 14:31

On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 09:02:39 -0800 (PST), tom dunne <dunnetg(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>In truth, I think Dusty makes his decisions largely as a combination
>of what's traditionally done and whatever his intuition says on the
>matter. He really doesn't care about numbers (for good or ill), and
>it's only when reporters ask him about his decisions that he attempts
>to rationalize with stats. That's why we hear about leadoff homers
>and cleanup steals, because those sorts of concrete answers get
>reporters off his back, even when they don't make good baseball sense.

Thank you! You've just helped me to finally clarify in my mind what I've been
trying to verbalize for a week now.

Dusty Baker is an old school manager who relies partially on traditional
baseball convention, and partially on instinct. I suppose that's to be expected
considering he learned while playing under old-school managers such as Walter
Alston, Tommy LaSorda, Frank Robinson, Danny Ozark, who managed the same way.

And this post will not be an anti-stahead rant either...but basically, Baker is
being criticized for not being something that he's not (a statistically oriented
manager). The problem I have with that criticism is that it assumes that the
traditional old-school method of managing is invalid, and I don't feel as if
that's been established. Leyland is a traditional manager and he had the Tigers
in the World Series the year after they went 71-91. McKeon epitomizes old school
managing and look what happened after he showed up in the Marlins' clubhouse in
2003...that team was 16-22 when he got there.

I think that perhaps what many observers fail to consider is that while saber is
looking at the results of hundreds or thousands of games, the fact is that
baseball isn't played that way. It is played one pitch at a time, one inning at
a time, one game at a time. I thnk this is therefore how an old school manager
thinks about things..They really don't care about VORP, OBP, OPS, or whatever.
What they care about, really, is runs. Not runs over the course of the entire
season or several seasons - just runs scored and runs allowed in tonight's game.

In that sense, if one is going to insist on looking at it from the saber
standpoint and looking at win modeling despite the fact that a single game is
too small a sample size to yield any meaningful statistical results - then Runs
is arguably the perfect team modeler for wins because the object is to win the
game, and the team that scores more runs than its opponent wins the game 100% of
the time.

In that light...a leadoff homer gives you a 1-0 lead, doesn't it?

Similarly - a fastball thrown to a batter when a fast runner is on base, on the
premise that the fastball gets to the catcher quicker and gives the catcher a
better chance to throw the runner out if he tries to steal, is presumably easier
for the batter to hit into the seats than a breaking ball. That is, assuming
that the breaking ball doesn't hang. :-)

My point here is that, given that saber is looking at long-term results while
traditionalist managers are looking at a shorter time frame, maybe the
difference isn't as significant as some might think. I recall reading online
somewhere that Hits actually tracks wins pretty well at 71%, that BA is a better
stat than it's given credit for all things considered because it tracks wins at
a 79% clip, that OBP tracks wins only 1.2% better than BA and that the
difference between BA and OPS is another 5% of improvement.

I think by that point you've got to at least be getting close to where the law
of diminishing returns kicks in - and at some point, plain old dumb luck enters
into the...well, equation. So while maybe you can tack on a couple more
percentage points by using VORP and stats like that, it seems academic to me - I
don't think you're getting much of a leap in improvement anymore at that point,

Ya'll know I don't buy saber hook/line/sinker to begin with...but even for those
that do, maybe the difference between that and old-school baseball isn't as
great as it's made out to be.

JK

From: tom dunne on 2 Mar 2010 14:32

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