Last week was here.
ATS - 60-63-7
SU - 78-52
Miami -1 Chicago loss/loss
Steelers -7 Oakland win/win
Jets -7 Texans loss/win
Balt -10 Carolina win/win
Tenn -7 Wash loss/loss
Dall -6.5 Det win/win
GB -3 Minnesota win/win
Bills +5.5 Bengals (Bengals win game) win/loss
Browns +1.5 Jags loss/loss
KC -8 Arizona win/win
Seattle +12 Saints (NO wins game) loss/win
Falcons -3 Rams win/win
Niners -3 TB loss/loss
Colts +3.5 NE (NE wins game) win/win
Eagles -3 NYG win/win
Den +10 SD (Chargers win game) loss/win
ATS 9-7 69-70-7
SU 11-5 89-57
The 200 Greatest Major League Baseball Players Ever 2011 Ed. #200-191
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Part I in the series, with the top players who just missed, the top active players who are in the vicinity of the list, and the underlying methodology is here.
The positions and teams listed aren't comprehensive, instead they are most representative of the player's career.
The slash stats aren't raw, they're translated for park/era.
MVPQ refers to all seasons where the player had a combined WAR/WARP of 16, as that's the number that means a MVP caliber season.
-The precision with which we evaluate offense is sharper than our understanding of defense; were you looking to make changes to the list, one way would be to bump up guys like Killebrew, whose value was almost entirely tied into offensive production. An OPS+ of 143 is a big ole' stick.
199. Goose Goslin LF 111.5
198. Jimmy Collins 3B 111.5
-WAR (reminder, I use the B-Ref version) overrates the 19th century players a little bit; consider that when looking at guys like Collins.
197. Jose Cruz LF 111.8
-Of note, Cruz's best seasons, sizeably so, were when he was 35 and 36. He has avoided steroid accusations.
196. Bobby Bonds RF 112.2
-The first SFG; the father/son Bonds is the greatest father/son combo in baseball history.
195. Graig Nettles 3B 112.4
-Two SFG in this first section; note that his best year wasn't with the Giants, but instead with the Cardinals.
193. Ron Cey 3B 113.2
-The best of that longtime Dodger infield.
192. Dazzy Vance RHP 113.4
-Our first pitcher on the list; ERA+ works like OPS+ the higher above 100 (the baseline number) the better. Also the first player to have MVP type seasons; in my previous build of this list, I gave bonus points for those seasons to reflect some type of peak in my list - I'm not doing it here, but if you want to consider that, at his best, Vance was one of baseball best players (twice!) and bump him up, I wouldn't object.
191. Jim Bunning RHP 113.5
-A better pitcher than statesman, which probably is not the last political comment in the list, but they're unlikely to be any more incendiary than that.
That's the first ten - next ten coming next week.
The positions and teams listed aren't comprehensive, instead they are most representative of the player's career.
The slash stats aren't raw, they're translated for park/era.
MVPQ refers to all seasons where the player had a combined WAR/WARP of 16, as that's the number that means a MVP caliber season.
200. Harmon Killebrew 1B/3B WARP+WAR 111.4
1954-75 Twins
Translated BA/OBP/SLG .268/.383/.545
OPS+ 143
MVPQ – none (Best season ’67 WARP+WAR 14.7)
-The precision with which we evaluate offense is sharper than our understanding of defense; were you looking to make changes to the list, one way would be to bump up guys like Killebrew, whose value was almost entirely tied into offensive production. An OPS+ of 143 is a big ole' stick.
199. Goose Goslin LF 111.5
1921-38 Senators
.289/.359/.503
OPS+ 128
MVPQ – none (Best season ’28 – 13.7)
-Gotta love that translated +.500 SLG.
-Gotta love that translated +.500 SLG.
198. Jimmy Collins 3B 111.5
1895-1908 Red Sox
.279/.337/.455
OPS+ 113
MVPQ – none (Best season ’98 – 15.4)
-WAR (reminder, I use the B-Ref version) overrates the 19th century players a little bit; consider that when looking at guys like Collins.
197. Jose Cruz LF 111.8
1970-88 Astros
.306/.375/.481
OPS+ 120
MVPQ – none (Best season ’84 – 15.3)
-Of note, Cruz's best seasons, sizeably so, were when he was 35 and 36. He has avoided steroid accusations.
196. Bobby Bonds RF 112.2
1968-81 Giants
.279/.336/.535
OPS+ 129
MVPQ – none (Best Season ’73 14.6)
-The first SFG; the father/son Bonds is the greatest father/son combo in baseball history.
195. Graig Nettles 3B 112.4
1967-88 Yankees
.257/.340/.469
OPS+ 110
MVPQ – none (Best season ’76 15.1)
-A mistake sportswriters have been prone to make (as reflected in HOF votes) is underestimating positional value (WAR does as well a little bit). Nettles wasn't a great bat, as evidenced by that 110 OPS+, but there aren't many guys who could give you two decades at third base with even that bat - and that's why Nettles makes the list.
-A mistake sportswriters have been prone to make (as reflected in HOF votes) is underestimating positional value (WAR does as well a little bit). Nettles wasn't a great bat, as evidenced by that 110 OPS+, but there aren't many guys who could give you two decades at third base with even that bat - and that's why Nettles makes the list.
194. Jack Clark RF 113.2
1975-92 Giants
OPS+ 137
.283/.395/.542
MVPQ - none (Best Season ’87, with Cardinals 12.7)
-Two SFG in this first section; note that his best year wasn't with the Giants, but instead with the Cardinals.
193. Ron Cey 3B 113.2
1971-87 Dodgers
.269/.365/.499
OPS+ 121
MVPQ – none (Best season ’75 - 15.1)
-The best of that longtime Dodger infield.
192. Dazzy Vance RHP 113.4
1915-35 Dodgers
ERA+ 125
MVPQ – 1924 (18.7) 1928 (18.7)
-Our first pitcher on the list; ERA+ works like OPS+ the higher above 100 (the baseline number) the better. Also the first player to have MVP type seasons; in my previous build of this list, I gave bonus points for those seasons to reflect some type of peak in my list - I'm not doing it here, but if you want to consider that, at his best, Vance was one of baseball best players (twice!) and bump him up, I wouldn't object.
191. Jim Bunning RHP 113.5
1955-71 Tigers/Phillies
ERA+ 114
MVPQ – 1966 (17.7) 1965 (17.4) 1967 (16.2)
-A better pitcher than statesman, which probably is not the last political comment in the list, but they're unlikely to be any more incendiary than that.
That's the first ten - next ten coming next week.
1st and Ten - The Weekly Tendown November 7-13 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Dear Internet -
There have been experiments like this.
Some with rats, or the Israeli Army, or elementary school students. They all go like this.
There's a random division between two groups. The rats, the military candidates, the kids, all randomly divided.
But those charged with training the groups (scientists, commanders, teachers) are misled, told that one of the groups has higher intelligence than the other. Even though the groups, again, completely divided randomly - all of the subjects had been given a test prior to the division; there's no difference in the scores of group A from group B.
A fixed period of time goes by, and then that pre-division test is again administered to the two groups.
What do you suppose is the result?
The group that the instructors believed to be more intelligent did significantly better than the other group.
The things we think about ourselves; the messages in our head about who we essentially are - they come from somewhere and they have real consequences. Could be a third grade teacher decided for whatever reason that you couldn't do math, and your whole life has been fulfilling that expectation.
Consider this - they took college students and divided them in 3 groups (this experiment might be in the book Sway - I have forgotten)
1. Women
2. Men
3. Mixed
The women were told was they were going to receive a 5 minute phone call from a man they did not know.
The men were told they were going to make a 5 minute phone call to a woman. They received a picture and bio of the woman they were going to call. The bios were real. The pictures were not. Half of the men got pictures of hot women. Half the men, not so much.
After the phone call, the men were asked to evaluate the women.
It will not surprise you that the men who had pictures of hot women had significantly higher opinions of those women than those who believed they were talking to less attractive women. The fake pretty women were smarter, more confident, funnier, more engaging than the fake not pretty women - according to the men.
You get that. It's an aspect of the halo effect. We ascribe all sorts of positive qualities to attractive people. It's one of the reasons why NFL quarterbacks have symmetrical facial features at a significantly higher rate not only than the general public but compared to other football players. The good looking kid is considered to be a better leader at some early stage of development, and is funneled to quarterback, a position of leadership. He's treated like a leader, and he becomes a leader. The elementary school kids are treated like smart kids - and they become smart kids. And the converse. Who we become is a function of how we are treated, of the messages about ourselves that are in our brains for reasons we cannot reconstruct.
That's where the mixed group comes in. They were played the tapes of the phone calls - but just the women's half of the call. And then they were asked to describe the women.
Which women did they like more?
Yeah - the fake pretty ones. Smarter, more engaged, more interesting, more confident.
That's how much we are impacted by the way we are treated - men believe they are talking to pretty women and therefore treat them in a particular way - the way they treat them then causes behavior from those women that is so noticeable that it can be heard in a five minute phone call by an outside group.
And the converse.
We think who we are is who we are. But here are these adult women, personalities fully formed, yet the belief that men have about their level of attractiveness (remember, the pictures - fake) can cause behavior so clear it is evidenced by an entirely non-biased outside group, a group which doesn't hear the men speak and doesn't see the pictures.
I've been doing a lot of writing about the World Champion San Francisco Giants over the last several months; I've talked about my childhood affinity for Charlie Brown, whose status as a loser (a lovable one perhaps, but a loser nonetheless, and a San Francisco Giants fan) was a defining characteristic. I've posted a link to a 2006 piece I wrote about the Giants that contained a line from Underworld about a character who loved the
New York Giants (the baseball version, yes):
He knows how to find the twisty compensation in the business of losing, being a loser, drawing it out, expanding it, making it sickly sweet, being someone carefully chosen for the role.
If you were to travel back in time a quarter century, either via flux capacitor or hot tub, to see teenage Jim Jividen in Prospect, Ohio - if I wasn't watching a Giants game, you'd probably see me watching the old David Letterman show.
Letterman's the most important comic voice of my lifetime, his "I'm here, but not really here; I'm commenting on this even as I live through it" sensibility is the way that I process my life, and I'd argue the way my generation and maybe the one subsequent has processed its reality (most recently seen in the Stewart/Colbert Un-Rally). But until this week, when I read The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy
Bill Carter's new book about the Conan/Leno contretemps, I hadn't thought about Letterman in Charlie Brown language.
There's a passage that includes a quote from Robert Morton, longtime Letterman producer, discussing the change the show went through when it moved from 12:30 to 11:30 when Dave was passed over for the Tonight Show and moved to CBS.
"The new show had to be about success. It can't be about failure, " Morton had said. The old show had celebrated failure.
And he's right. And he's right and that's why I liked it, and what I missed about it after the move to CBS. I enjoyed the failure. I identified with the failure.
So - which comes first? The Charlie Brown, David Letterman, San Francisco Giants - is it that I identified with the failure and so I gravitated toward it - or is it that the I internalized those messages of failure about myself? Who had the ugly girl picture of me?
That's what I thought about this week. After the jump - the rest of Tendown 51. Special Elevendown!
There have been experiments like this.
Some with rats, or the Israeli Army, or elementary school students. They all go like this.
There's a random division between two groups. The rats, the military candidates, the kids, all randomly divided.
But those charged with training the groups (scientists, commanders, teachers) are misled, told that one of the groups has higher intelligence than the other. Even though the groups, again, completely divided randomly - all of the subjects had been given a test prior to the division; there's no difference in the scores of group A from group B.
A fixed period of time goes by, and then that pre-division test is again administered to the two groups.
What do you suppose is the result?
The group that the instructors believed to be more intelligent did significantly better than the other group.
The things we think about ourselves; the messages in our head about who we essentially are - they come from somewhere and they have real consequences. Could be a third grade teacher decided for whatever reason that you couldn't do math, and your whole life has been fulfilling that expectation.
Consider this - they took college students and divided them in 3 groups (this experiment might be in the book Sway - I have forgotten)
1. Women
2. Men
3. Mixed
The women were told was they were going to receive a 5 minute phone call from a man they did not know.
The men were told they were going to make a 5 minute phone call to a woman. They received a picture and bio of the woman they were going to call. The bios were real. The pictures were not. Half of the men got pictures of hot women. Half the men, not so much.
After the phone call, the men were asked to evaluate the women.
It will not surprise you that the men who had pictures of hot women had significantly higher opinions of those women than those who believed they were talking to less attractive women. The fake pretty women were smarter, more confident, funnier, more engaging than the fake not pretty women - according to the men.
You get that. It's an aspect of the halo effect. We ascribe all sorts of positive qualities to attractive people. It's one of the reasons why NFL quarterbacks have symmetrical facial features at a significantly higher rate not only than the general public but compared to other football players. The good looking kid is considered to be a better leader at some early stage of development, and is funneled to quarterback, a position of leadership. He's treated like a leader, and he becomes a leader. The elementary school kids are treated like smart kids - and they become smart kids. And the converse. Who we become is a function of how we are treated, of the messages about ourselves that are in our brains for reasons we cannot reconstruct.
That's where the mixed group comes in. They were played the tapes of the phone calls - but just the women's half of the call. And then they were asked to describe the women.
Which women did they like more?
Yeah - the fake pretty ones. Smarter, more engaged, more interesting, more confident.
That's how much we are impacted by the way we are treated - men believe they are talking to pretty women and therefore treat them in a particular way - the way they treat them then causes behavior from those women that is so noticeable that it can be heard in a five minute phone call by an outside group.
And the converse.
We think who we are is who we are. But here are these adult women, personalities fully formed, yet the belief that men have about their level of attractiveness (remember, the pictures - fake) can cause behavior so clear it is evidenced by an entirely non-biased outside group, a group which doesn't hear the men speak and doesn't see the pictures.
I've been doing a lot of writing about the World Champion San Francisco Giants over the last several months; I've talked about my childhood affinity for Charlie Brown, whose status as a loser (a lovable one perhaps, but a loser nonetheless, and a San Francisco Giants fan) was a defining characteristic. I've posted a link to a 2006 piece I wrote about the Giants that contained a line from Underworld about a character who loved the
New York Giants (the baseball version, yes):
He knows how to find the twisty compensation in the business of losing, being a loser, drawing it out, expanding it, making it sickly sweet, being someone carefully chosen for the role.
If you were to travel back in time a quarter century, either via flux capacitor or hot tub, to see teenage Jim Jividen in Prospect, Ohio - if I wasn't watching a Giants game, you'd probably see me watching the old David Letterman show.
Letterman's the most important comic voice of my lifetime, his "I'm here, but not really here; I'm commenting on this even as I live through it" sensibility is the way that I process my life, and I'd argue the way my generation and maybe the one subsequent has processed its reality (most recently seen in the Stewart/Colbert Un-Rally). But until this week, when I read The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy
Bill Carter's new book about the Conan/Leno contretemps, I hadn't thought about Letterman in Charlie Brown language.There's a passage that includes a quote from Robert Morton, longtime Letterman producer, discussing the change the show went through when it moved from 12:30 to 11:30 when Dave was passed over for the Tonight Show and moved to CBS.
"The new show had to be about success. It can't be about failure, " Morton had said. The old show had celebrated failure.
And he's right. And he's right and that's why I liked it, and what I missed about it after the move to CBS. I enjoyed the failure. I identified with the failure.
So - which comes first? The Charlie Brown, David Letterman, San Francisco Giants - is it that I identified with the failure and so I gravitated toward it - or is it that the I internalized those messages of failure about myself? Who had the ugly girl picture of me?
That's what I thought about this week. After the jump - the rest of Tendown 51. Special Elevendown!
I Pick College Football Games in 2010 - Week 11
Friday, November 12, 2010
Last week is here.
Overall: 51-58-1
Army over Kent win
Auburn -7.5 Georgia win
UCF -10 So Miss loss
Iowa -10 Northwestern loss
Mary -1.5 Virginia win
Miss +2.5Tenn loss
Navy -14 Cent Mich loss
N Tex +11 Mid Tenn win
Ok St -5.5 Tex win
Tul -4 Rice win
6-4
57-62-1
Overall: 51-58-1
Army over Kent win
Auburn -7.5 Georgia win
UCF -10 So Miss loss
Iowa -10 Northwestern loss
Mary -1.5 Virginia win
Miss +2.5Tenn loss
Navy -14 Cent Mich loss
N Tex +11 Mid Tenn win
Ok St -5.5 Tex win
Tul -4 Rice win
6-4
57-62-1
I Pick Every NFL Game in 2010 - Week 10
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Last week is here.
ATS: 55-54-7
SU: 73-43
I've got nothing going at all against the number, last week was my worst of the season - but I'm rolling straight up, now 30 games above .500.
Balt +1 Atlanta loss/loss
Buff -3 Detroit loss/loss
Chicago +1.5 Minn win/win
Cle +3 NYJ loss/loss
Tenn -2 Mia loss/loss
Indianapolis -7 Cincinnati loss/win
Hou +1.5 Jax loss/loss
Carol +6.5 TB (Bucs win game) loss/win
KC -1 Den loss/loss
Ariz -3 Seattle loss/loss
Dall +14 NYG (Giants win game) win/loss
Rams +6 Niners (niners win game) win/win
NE +4.5 Pitt (Steelers win game) win/loss
Eagles -3 Skins win/win
ATS 5-9
60-63-7
SU 5-9
78-52
ATS: 55-54-7
SU: 73-43
I've got nothing going at all against the number, last week was my worst of the season - but I'm rolling straight up, now 30 games above .500.
Balt +1 Atlanta loss/loss
Buff -3 Detroit loss/loss
Chicago +1.5 Minn win/win
Cle +3 NYJ loss/loss
Tenn -2 Mia loss/loss
Indianapolis -7 Cincinnati loss/win
Hou +1.5 Jax loss/loss
Carol +6.5 TB (Bucs win game) loss/win
KC -1 Den loss/loss
Ariz -3 Seattle loss/loss
Dall +14 NYG (Giants win game) win/loss
Rams +6 Niners (niners win game) win/win
NE +4.5 Pitt (Steelers win game) win/loss
Eagles -3 Skins win/win
ATS 5-9
60-63-7
SU 5-9
78-52
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