Joe Posnanski, Jim Riggleman, Louis C.K., and what non-stat people believe stat people think

[BaltimoreTerp]

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/03/chinese-jibberish.html

[mweb]

Great stuff as usual from Mr. Posnanski.

[SteveA]

Did you catch Jim Palmer on the broadcast yesterday? He DOES seem to understand some of these stats, but doesn't seem crazy about them.

Something to the effect about "now you can get an out on a line drive to the right fielder, and it's not about getting the out anymore. It's about whether you SHOULD have gotten the out or not. Getting the out's not good enough anymore".

[DrungoHazewood]

Posnanski is the best thing that's happened to sabermetrics since Bill James. There are days where I think he's one of the best writers around, not just baseball writers. When you have someone like him breaking down the issues and pointing out the ridiculousness of the guys on the other side, you know you're going to win. In my lifetime we'll look at the managers like Riggleman and their obvious distaste for evidence the way people from the 50s and 60s looked at managers who took up Ty Cobb's position that home runs ruined baseball. Or like the elderly Paul Richards turning an in-his-prime Goose Gossage into a mediocre starter. Nod your head, chuckle, move on.

I deserve 30 lashes for that post I made years ago where I confused Posnanski with some guy FJM was lampooning and I suggested people ignore him.

[Can_of_corn]

Great stuff, my favorite bit

That's fine. I mean, no, it's not really "fine" in that that I wouldn't want him to be the manager of my team,

[orayole]

That was awesome. Learned a lot in that article.

[Tank]

Yeah great article. Why didn't I have his blog bookmarked already?

[Phantom]

That's gold, Jerry! Gold!

Word.

How do we go about making this mandatory reading?

[CharmCityRocker]

There are days where I think he's one of the best writers around, not just baseball writers.

I absolutely 100% agree with this. And he proves it when he writes about his family life, or movies, or music, or other sports or pretty much anything on his blog. The Soul of Baseball is easily one of my favorite books of all time. And now, all it takes is for Joe to mention Buck in a post and I get a little choked up.

[Fan4Life]

Interesting. While the average of all SP in all games may be 25%,of the game, it certainly varies enough between pitchers and perhaps for the same pitcher between different opponents to account for that doesn't it?

Those calculations show that a SP could only achieve 37% of the outcome of a game and that's if he throws 9 innings. Wouldn't a strikeout pitcher be closer to the 50%? A contact pitcher below 37%? How would you account for teams with poor defense?