I think Girardi is a reasonably good manager, capable of delivering a World Serious Championship. Right now the Yankees should be considered the favorite or among the top 2 or 3 favorites to win it all. If they don’t, it’s most likely going to be CC, AJ, Andy &/or Joba who is the biggest reason.

This year has got to be some kind of a record for this kind of disaster relief pitching.

It annoys me the Yanks didn’t torch that ham and egger last weekend…

And the Red Sox are rallying as I type this; back to back jacks, and a bad hop single.

National pastime. The military is just as American as baseball. There were a lot of ballplayers that served. Bob Feller, for one holds his military accomplishments in higher esteem than his baseball accomplishments.

wrote a very strong 5/8ths of an article destroying cERA, but also the “proof” that there was no difference between one defensive catcher and another

Overall, there really isn’t… I would suspect that cERA would fall to the variances of SSS, anyway. Defensive wizards behind the plate are nice, but I’d be willing to wager that given a choice, a team would go with a catcher than can hit over a catcher who can’t but has a good glove.

What diverted your attention, I may ask.

Anyone have a stat for that? “Fielding success on ground balls when interfered with by an all-star third baseman with an only partially repaired hip and sometimes questionable judgment.”

SSS… Doesn’t happen enough to warrant a stat.

I’ve been so angry with their performance that it makes me all the more likely to go ballistic if we don’t handle them at the Stadium.

I’m someone who loves numbers but has been kind of busy for the last few years, so I’ll only start to examine a particular advanced statistic when it starts to get shoved down my throat repeatedly or if it somehow piques my interest at the right moment when I have a little time on my hands.

FIP, though it’s been around longer, has seemed to be a big hit this summer, and from everything I can tell so far, I dislike it. Looking at DICE, is the only difference between FIP and DICE the use of HBP and a slightly different adjusting number?

dERA definitely looks complicated.

I always think the big thing people can lose with statistics is the core idea: the goal should always be to reflect reality more accurately, to strip away *real* things so that we are left with the thing we want to examine – I like to think of statistics very visually, almost imagining myself erasing the elements (a third baseman, an excess of foul territory, a really, really stupid wall from a glorified softball stadium, etc.) that I want to strip out so that I can compare the one thing to the other.

I like to believe that this approach makes sure that you hew closer to reality as you push beneath the surface. Remember when people thought defense was overrated and unquantifiable? I wrote a very strong 5/8ths of an article destroying cERA, but also the “proof” that there was no difference between one defensive catcher and another, including all sorts of statistical proof of the inadequacy of the article’s positions, and then had my attention diverted. It was obvious to me, from the first moment of looking at what the guy – I think he may have been a university prof – was doing with his catching statistics was ignoring all the realities of what makes or might make two backstops different.

Sometimes thinking about the differences that you know exist or that you think might exist, or that you think could exist, and then trying to statistically represent them to see if they hold up can be a better approach. Just throwing together a bunch of numbers can lead you to make huge mistakes in representing reality. Imo.

[194] The pitch that I knew was going to yield a home run for sure was Burnett’s. I knew it with all my heart that Kinsler’s HR was coming. I wasn’t quite so bothered because I was certain we were going to score a lot more.

Why so much hate for Coke, though? When he’s bad, it seems to go really bad, but he’s had many more good outings than bad ones over the last two months, including some reasonably big spots, no? Particularly when used as a LOOGY for one or two batters, I’ve liked what I’ve seen.

I know he was atrocious today. Of course, I don’t think it helped him to have ARod stumble right into his kitchen to stand there and be all obstacle-like when he tried to field the bunt. And I think that rattled him. Anyone have a stat for that? “Fielding success on ground balls when interfered with by an all-star third baseman with an only partially repaired hip and sometimes questionable judgment.” Or even just how to strip that sort of event out of broader performance…

Now we have the lefty who comes in to give up HR to lefties.

Has baseball passed me by?

http://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Blue-Gray-National-Pastime/dp/0691130434/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251418029&sr=1-3

I never read it, but he knew his stuff…although he was a Red Sox fan.

“Good question, my son, good question.”

As to the game itself? Horse shit. By the time we were issued our sixth walk with one run to show for it while they’d been issued two with three runs to show for it, I was mad.

Mad, mad, mad.

It’s a good thing we have a lead because I’d have really been throwing things otherwise. As it was, I was able to slough it off easily enough.

Hope I get to go to another game this season. The experience really was every bit as enjoyable as ever. It’s a gorgeous field.

Speaking of which, I caught a glimpse of the great void where the old field used to be on the 4, through the sliver in the Stadium. It was deeply unsettling.

I won’t say it was as unsettling as suddenly not having the World Trade Center be there, but it was the same genre of unsettlement. It looked like an apocalyptic dream.