The Blog of Revelation - by Jim Jividen

Matsui, on the other hand, is bidding a very fond ...

2009-11-04T21:09:47.433-05:00

Matsui, on the other hand, is bidding a very fond farewell to Yankee Stadium. Will it now be known as the House that Godzilla Built? (kind of ironic, since Godzilla is known more as a destroyer than a creator...)

Well, A-Rod just struck out with the bases loaded ...

2009-11-04T21:08:13.846-05:00

Well, A-Rod just struck out with the bases loaded and the chance to put the game away, or at least pad their lead. More fuel for the "myth".

"Do you have any evidence that he is doing lousy i...

2009-11-03T19:13:28.808-05:00

"Do you have any evidence that he is doing lousy in those specific situations, though?"

I admit that I do not, which is why I also conceeded that my argument doesn't mean that Jim's premise is not correct. My point was just that the way in which he attempted to prove his point was logically flawed.

Do you have any evidence that he is doing lousy in...

2009-11-03T17:34:54.361-05:00

Do you have any evidence that he is doing lousy in those specific situations, though? (It's a thing I want to look into - baseball reference doesn't seem to do splits for postseason stats, but they've got all the boxscores so it wouldn't be hard to generate given a bit of time.) Because in his career, in the regular season, A-Rod's line with the bases loaded is .340/.392/.686. In 191 such at bats he's got 213 RBIs. So in the regular season, at least, he's got the bases loaded thing down. He also, for his career, hits better with men on than the bases empty. (There's a really clear trend, as you move from man on first to second to third, of his power going down and his OBP going way up, so he's being pitched carefully whenever guys are in scoring position. See below.)

A-Rod, regular season career, with men on...

1st .319/.387/.627
2nd .291/.424/.553
3rd .308/.439/.471
2nd and 3rd .327/.473/.487

I'm cherry-picking a bit, but this is all stuff I pulled out of my ass in five minutes in front of a computer. All of it suggests to me that A-Rod is not a choker, and pitchers don't perceive him as such because they pitch him very carefully with men in scoring position, more carefully than they do otherwise. I assume the playoff stats would break about the same way.

I don't understand how you make the argument that ...

2009-11-02T20:32:22.821-05:00

I don't understand how you make the argument that "ARod somehow got the yips in the big moments, just isn't borne out by the facts." by taking the average of his entire postseason batting line.

Big moments are specific, single at-bats that mean something. A guy could be batting .500 in the post-season, but if he's also batting .000 in several attempts with the bases loaded, I would still call him a choke artist.

Doesn't mean that you're not right, but your argument that A-Rod doesn't choke in the big at-bats because he has a decent career line is not valid.

I guess this is what Michael Jackson was talking a...

2009-11-02T06:07:39.225-05:00

I guess this is what Michael Jackson was talking about being too high to get over and too low to get under.

Oh well. You had a good run.

2009-10-31T20:34:24.956-04:00

Oh well. You had a good run.

No.

2009-10-28T23:36:23.811-04:00

No.

In the Counterfactual world, did Counterfactual Ri...

2009-10-28T17:22:22.219-04:00

In the Counterfactual world, did Counterfactual Ricky Steamboat just sign with Counterfactual TNA?

Doh! Misread Cardinals Giants. Never mind.

2009-10-26T17:32:43.762-04:00

Doh! Misread Cardinals Giants. Never mind.

Wow...three pushes total. The linemakers were rea...

2009-10-26T06:37:21.270-04:00

Wow...three pushes total. The linemakers were really on the ball this week!

Yanks in 6.

2009-10-23T09:23:59.853-04:00

Yanks in 6.

Will this post go on to become Jim's "Dewey Beats ...

2009-10-23T07:01:18.984-04:00

Will this post go on to become Jim's "Dewey Beats Truman"?

Also, this is why those of us who aren't terribly ...

2009-10-22T14:33:38.701-04:00

Also, this is why those of us who aren't terribly vested in sports see the sports media as a bunch of idiotic 17-year-old boys who desperately want to be on the field as opposed to sitting in an office writing about it.

I like Chris Berman, though. Shame about that Prime Time. It was a good show.

"Atheism 3.0": There is no god, but religion is go...

2009-10-19T17:43:47.995-04:00

"Atheism 3.0": There is no god, but religion is good.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-10-19-atheism-belief_N.htm

Never mind all that, where's our Balloon Boy blog?...

2009-10-18T08:05:25.793-04:00

Never mind all that, where's our Balloon Boy blog?

Speaking of race and stuff; the front page of toda...

2009-10-16T10:48:27.644-04:00

Speaking of race and stuff; the front page of today's Times Picayune has a wonderful juxtaposition: picture of Obama (racially mixed, I believe, as is Mrs. O) and an article about a LA JP who refuses to issue marriage licenses to racially mixed couples 'out of concern for the children' although he has 'piles of black friends'. One wonders if that's piles, as in stacks of dead bodies?

There isn't one. I mean, someone might be taking ...

2009-10-16T10:11:26.598-04:00

There isn't one. I mean, someone might be taking action, but I'm unaware of it.

What's the line on Michigan vs Delaware State? If...

2009-10-16T02:41:14.515-04:00

What's the line on Michigan vs Delaware State? If DSU gets more than 30, I'd have to say they are a lock.

On another note, can somebody tell me why teams fe...

2009-10-13T09:27:37.090-04:00

On another note, can somebody tell me why teams feel the need to have a champagne spraying celebration for winning a Division Series? A pennant, yeah, a division title, sure, but a huge plastic sheeted celebration for winning a quarterfinal matchup?

Do NBA teams go nuts over advancing past the second round? Do NBA teams party like it's 1999 after advancing past the wildcard round? Would NHL players douse each other if they had a stupid name for their quarterfinal round? Are street peddlers hawking "LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANNEHEIM DIVISION SERIES CHAMPION" t-shirts as we speak?

By "results" of course I am referring to wins, as ...

2009-10-10T00:31:12.201-04:00

By "results" of course I am referring to wins, as that is the only stat that really matters. The old blog is no longer available, but I recall you saying something like the Padres were the worst team in the league and that they couldn't (as opposed to "wouldn't, though I could be remembering it wrong) win more than 65 games. So winning 75, and with winning streaks of 10 and 7 along the way, they certainly got more bang for the buck (I would be all for the creation of a WPM, or "wins per million" type stat that would tell which team got the best performance dollar for dollar)

Of course I realize that, when winning a game can come down to an unnecessary umpire blowing an incredibly easy fair/foul call ten feet away from him, the margin of error of such a prediction will be necessarily high.

San Diego was pretty bad; their pythagorean is low...

2009-10-09T09:57:14.227-04:00

San Diego was pretty bad; their pythagorean is lower than their actual win/loss (which at 75-87 still isn't glorious), they gave up 131 more runs than they scored. Unless I'm misreading you, which just struck me, and what you're saying isn't "the Padres played better than forecasted" and instead "the Padres won more games than they should have based on how poorly they played." Both claims might be true, actually - the metrics do have the Padres as the worst team in the NL West this year, so you can't say it was a successful season, but I did think they'd be worse than that. I anticipated more of a sell off (Bell/Gonzalez) than took place. I don't have an answer as to why a team outplays its pythag in a given year, but it doesn't appear to be a stable occurrence, to the contrary, a team that wins more games in a season than its underlying metrics is likely to regress the following season. That's a pretty demonstrable rule of thumb. It could be, I guess, that there's some magic in one season that just isn't there the next, I tend toward that its happenstance. I'm sure there are also smart things to say about the Mariners, but its the NL that I watch every day, so I'd have to look it up.

Since team chemistry has no bearing on results wha...

2009-10-09T08:27:23.025-04:00

Since team chemistry has no bearing on results whatsoever, to what do you attribute the overachieving seasons of the Mariners and the Padres?

Yes.

2009-10-07T10:52:50.046-04:00

Yes.

Baseball's still going on?

2009-10-07T10:48:01.494-04:00

Baseball's still going on?