Albert Pujols - Page 2

Grandstander · 05-17-2007, 12:49 AM

Jtur:
It is nonsensical to make the playoff success the standard by which managers and teams are judged. In such cases you are talking about a tiny sampling of four to seven games and ignoring the 162 games played in reaching the playoffs.

If a team wins 100 games during the season, and you divided their season into 23 consecutive seven game series, of course you are going to find numerous times when the team "lost" a series. Such things are clearly more related to random chance than is the result of 162 games.

Further, in post season competition, you are playing only quality opponents, of course your chances of losing will be increased. The seeming differences are not very meaningful in a seven game series. To wit: A 100 win team (.617) is facing a 90 win team. (.555) So...should we consider the 100 win team to be the big favorite? No. .617 ball applied to seven games is 4.3 wins. .555 ball applied to seven games is 3.9 wins. And that's the actual difference, .4 wins, less than a half game advantage. If the opponent won 92 games, (.568) that would be 4.0 wins out of seven games. A 95 win team (.586) would win 4.1 games to the 100 win teams 4.3 games.

So, you must appreciate what a crap shoot the post season really is. Luck is an enormous factor. A 95 win team and a 100 win team would need to meet 31 times before the difference in winning percentage amounted to one full game in favor of the 100 win team.

If this isn't evident to you from the math, you could at least have noticed the frequency of the world champion not being the best team from the season. St. Louis last year had the distinction of being the worst WS winner ever. From '02 through '04, the wild card team won all three World Series.

Finally, you are applying a standard of judgment to the post season which you would never apply in other situations. If you were asked to evaluate a hitter and your choices were data from his entire season, or just the data from seven selected games, would you not instantly select the former? Would not selecting the latter strike you as idiotic? Why then would you apply this approach to judging a manager's effectiveness?

jtur88 · 05-17-2007, 07:31 AM

Those playoff games are the ones that stand out in my mind. He used a revolving door pitching strategy, even though his middle relief was his weakest link. It's like he had a national stage, and he just couldn't resist strutting out to the mound and displaying his peacock-like genius by bringing in one triple-A pitcher after another, And the most glaring thing I remember was batting Renteria (a .300+ hitter with high RBI niumbers) second and then giving him the bunt sign ievery time his lead-off man got on base, including n the first inning, thus either wasting Renteria or putting him behind in the count. This is something he did over and over again. If he is so determined to bunt with his number-two hitter, why doesn't he bat his pitcher in that spot?

05-17-2007, 12:49 AM	#16 (permalink)
Grandstander Hall of Famer Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Parts Unknown Northern California Posts: 5,841	Jtur: It is nonsensical to make the playoff success the standard by which managers and teams are judged. In such cases you are talking about a tiny sampling of four to seven games and ignoring the 162 games played in reaching the playoffs. If a team wins 100 games during the season, and you divided their season into 23 consecutive seven game series, of course you are going to find numerous times when the team "lost" a series. Such things are clearly more related to random chance than is the result of 162 games. Further, in post season competition, you are playing only quality opponents, of course your chances of losing will be increased. The seeming differences are not very meaningful in a seven game series. To wit: A 100 win team (.617) is facing a 90 win team. (.555) So...should we consider the 100 win team to be the big favorite? No. .617 ball applied to seven games is 4.3 wins. .555 ball applied to seven games is 3.9 wins. And that's the actual difference, .4 wins, less than a half game advantage. If the opponent won 92 games, (.568) that would be 4.0 wins out of seven games. A 95 win team (.586) would win 4.1 games to the 100 win teams 4.3 games. So, you must appreciate what a crap shoot the post season really is. Luck is an enormous factor. A 95 win team and a 100 win team would need to meet 31 times before the difference in winning percentage amounted to one full game in favor of the 100 win team. If this isn't evident to you from the math, you could at least have noticed the frequency of the world champion not being the best team from the season. St. Louis last year had the distinction of being the worst WS winner ever. From '02 through '04, the wild card team won all three World Series. Finally, you are applying a standard of judgment to the post season which you would never apply in other situations. If you were asked to evaluate a hitter and your choices were data from his entire season, or just the data from seven selected games, would you not instantly select the former? Would not selecting the latter strike you as idiotic? Why then would you apply this approach to judging a manager's effectiveness? Last edited by Grandstander; 05-17-2007 at 12:52 AM.

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05-17-2007, 07:31 AM	#17 (permalink)
jtur88 Hall of Famer Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: South Texas Posts: 7,665	Those playoff games are the ones that stand out in my mind. He used a revolving door pitching strategy, even though his middle relief was his weakest link. It's like he had a national stage, and he just couldn't resist strutting out to the mound and displaying his peacock-like genius by bringing in one triple-A pitcher after another, And the most glaring thing I remember was batting Renteria (a .300+ hitter with high RBI niumbers) second and then giving him the bunt sign ievery time his lead-off man got on base, including n the first inning, thus either wasting Renteria or putting him behind in the count. This is something he did over and over again. If he is so determined to bunt with his number-two hitter, why doesn't he bat his pitcher in that spot?