Are We Further Out of Touch Than I Thought?
February 24, 2010 at 5:31 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 24 CommentsAs regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been pointing out how wins (among other stats, but mostly wins) are all but useless in evaluating a pitcher’s performance for nearly three years now. I didn’t come up with the idea, and I’m hardly the first to say it, but it’s been a pet conceit of mine. Recently, some commenters noted that they thought I’d been pointing it out too much – that it’s so obvious by this point that it’s not even worth mentioning. After all, you don’t point out how the sun rises every single day, do you?
Yet I wonder about the thought that advanced ideas, so well-known in the blogging and sabermetric community, no longer need to be discussed. Don’t we all know people who don’t put 1/100th of the thought into baseball as we do, and still think in that antiquated fashion? Sure, the ‘casual’ fan is never going to read this blog, or very likely any blog. Yet the casual fan outnumbers us in terms of attendance and merchandising power by a multiplier I can’t even imagine. It’s why guys like Joe Morgan can not only survive but thrive in the broadcast world, because they speak to the lowest common denominator. It’s refreshing to see guys like Jon Sciambi of ESPN speak about how they’re trying to bring advanced thinking to the masses, yet depressing to know that those same masses rejected a relatively simple stat like OPS as “too complicated“.
The reason this comes to mind today is because of the official Dodger Facebook page, when the topic turned to Manny’s “I probably won’t be back” comments. As I and other bloggers unanimously said on HotStove.com today, the story was a non-issue – Manny was almost certainly not coming back for 2011 regardless. Yet on the Facebook page – and remember, people commenting on the Facebook page are not the same kind of people who seek to comment on blogs – the sentiment was not only “we hate Manny”, but “we love Juan Pierre and the Dodgers made a huge mistake by trading him.”
I’m not going to tell anyone they should love Manny, after all he’s done. And I’m not going to tell anyone that Juan Pierre can’t be their favorite player, since that’s a matter of personal opinion. But to say that Pierre is simply a better player than Manny is really something that’s completely inarguable – it’s not close to true on this planet or any other, nor is it something we’d ever even consider.
Yet according to the overwhelming majority of the Facebook posts… well, here’s just a sample.
I mean, it goes on like that for pages. I absolutely get it if Manny lost the trust and faith that fans put into him, so I don’t mind that he’s not popular. But just look how many people are under the idea that Pierre is simply a better ballplayer, not just a better person.
It’s insane, and it shows that despite all the progress that’s been made, especially over the last 10 years, there’s still absolutely huge amounts of people out there who still just don’t get it. And that’s why I will always point out why wins are ridiculous.
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Awesome post, Mike.
If you need an Exhibit B, check out the first comment on the LA Times’ “Dodger Blog” for the story that Eric Gagne was returning.
Comment by Eric Stephen — February 24, 2010 #
Good LORD, I hadn’t seen that.
Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness — February 24, 2010 #
But, I think I did say it would happen in the post about Gagne signing.
http://mikesciosciastragicillness.com/2010/02/19/eric-gagne-gets-another-shot/
Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness — February 24, 2010 #
My dog … it’s full of rats!
That… that is brilliant.
Comment by Rob McMillin — February 24, 2010 #
Recall what I said on the BBWC about the “candlelight vigil” crowd.
Comment by OCMike — February 24, 2010 #
I’m sure a lot of those commenters won’t make a peep if Manny rakes like usual at the start of the year.
Comment by dingers — February 24, 2010 #
I think a lot of it is that baseball is the only sport that we can think with a couple lucky breaks we could have been a big leaguer like David Eckstein. There’s no other major sport that you could ever see yourself competing physically in so when a bad player “like us” (Juan Pierre) gets sent out of town for some roided up good player that we had no chance of ever looking like (Manny) we take it as an attack on us.
Either that or they bought in to way too much crap George Will wrote in the 70s and believe in some mystical gentlemans game that never actually existed.
Comment by regfairfield — February 24, 2010 #
I don’t think I’d ever been to the Dodgers Facebook page before. All I can say is…wow. Great post!
Comment by Chris — February 24, 2010 #
Trust me i have been on that page and have over and over given people the facts but it falls on deaf ears. they make the arguement that he did great when Manny was gone but fail to see the whole stats of those games. Its the same arguement i made with my girlfriend (who i recently converted from a mets fan to Dodger fan) when the trade came about. she saw it as a big mistake on our part. i told her that you will get fans true and blue who would die for their team and have an emotional attachment to them but they also got to remember that Baseball like every other job is business.
Comment by Nolan Ryan Beatdown — February 24, 2010 #
In some ways I am seeing it as a mistake to trade Pierre, only because he really was a valuable bench player to have compared to what we could sign, and the money was a sunk cost.
Comment by Kevin — February 25, 2010 #
I know that sounded heartless in a way but we make moves to win whether its getting rid of a fan favorite to open up more cap space or resting athletes (we also argued about why Torre felt it necessary to rest Blake alot more this season. she failed to see the resting as a way of preserving a vets health who is old. she took it as being agist when someone is good you put them out there regardless). But look at it this way. we were all young and most young children emotionally attach to a specific player for some reason and when something happens to that player (injury or trade) We are crushed But as we get older and stick with the team we begin to get the workings of the game and slowly come to understand that things happen
Comment by Nolan Ryan Beatdown — February 24, 2010 #
Wow, that facebook page has almost as many idiots as the ESPN Dodger page……
Comment by daveinfv — February 24, 2010 #
Mike I hear what you’re saying, but the only problem with “I will always point out why wins are ridiculous” is that there are two types of people, those that have heard it and those that never will
Comment by Dodger Doodle — February 24, 2010 #
It’s Manny…people don’t get that he makes a living by playing. Life is too short. Great post!
Comment by Wes Parker — February 24, 2010 #
Mike, you write as if you seemed surprised to see those posts from low information fans on the Dodger Faceboook page. Surely you can’t be surprised at the sheer volume of ignorance plaguing this country; baseball fandom is just a subset of that greater group.
Comment by shmolnick — February 25, 2010 #
I always thot is was misery that loved company, from those facebook quotes i can now add ignorance or maybe its just that in this particular race, ignorance has left misery in the dust.
Comment by bluetrain — February 25, 2010 #
I love the completely biased and unsubstantiated opinions like the facebook commenter who said that Juan Pierre had “one of the best records for stolen bases”….umm…did he mean for amount of times caught stealing? :P
Comment by Trevor — February 25, 2010 #
On a related note, I love how people will say that a “stolen base equals a double” without recognizing that a stolen base doesn’t help to say, score the runner from 3rd base and that a caught stealing equals an out and squanders a scoring opportunity by erasing the erstwhile baserunner. But I guess people love them some Juan Pierre, no matter what the rest of us have to say about him.
Comment by Trevor — February 25, 2010 #
These are the same fans who Frank McCourt loves. They are hopelessly clueless and believe the pap that Bill Plaschke puts in his morning bird cage liner. The disconnect between those who get it and those who wouldn’t know OPS from POS is getting larger by the day. The scary thing is that when you try to explain things like OPS or VORP, you can actually hear the gears jamming in their heads.
Comment by grabarkewitz — February 25, 2010 #
@nolanryanbeatdown http://mikesciosciastragicillness.com/2010/02/24/are-we-further-out-of-touch-than-i-thought/#comment-8657
nah, the Dodgers need to make moves based on how they feel, that’s the only effective way to win. Remember how the Red Sox loved Nomar and then suddenly hated him and traded him at the 2004 deadline and won the World Series? That’s a direct 1:1 correlation.
Comment by dingers — February 25, 2010 #
It just goes to show; there are two kinds of people in the world- those who like Joe Morgan, and those who liked FJM, may its memory be a blessing.
Comment by Mike Sharperson Lives! — February 25, 2010 #
Let’s just face the fact that most Dodgers fans are idiots.
Great post Mike.
Comment by KempKershaw — February 27, 2010 #
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[...] be pretty damned good if it gets you a .917 OPS. It’s that kind of media fail which lead to posts like this, wondering why so many fans preferred Pierre to Manny despite overwhelming evidence that he’s [...]
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