Between Heads and Tails There's Guts...

It's not easy to determine how much of the universe is relevant to a given event, a pitch, an at bat. The event appears local; a pitcher on a hill of dirt, a batter 60 feet away. But every hitter and pitcher brings with them the mark of every hit and pitch from everywhere they've been, the stuff of prediction and maneuver.

Many psychological states are metaphorically described as physically concrete and tangible; a hitter may carry a burden, or the weight of the world into the batters box. These days, with adjusted and normalized stats, every pitch carries with it the entire league, the entire history of baseball even. Its only 4 feet by 6 in the batters box, but a whole lot can fit. If these stats are more predictive the more of the universe they encompass, are not these numbers carried with a hitter into the box, somehow making it- physically or otherwise- more or less likely that a particular something occurs? Or is the at bat isolated,a self-contained box of novelty and uniqueness? Are matters local, but statistics global?

I dunno, I just work here.

Its hard to predict playoff series, of course. Small sample size yes, flicks of contingencies and mood and clutchiness, sure, but there is also the question of relevance; which stats, if any, are most predictive in a short series? Throw out everything but that particular hitter/pitcher matchup? Or drag in the whole universe? Ignore Ortiz' stats vs. righties when Saunders is pitching? Is Ortiz the feared slugger temporarily non-existent in that scenario, or at least relegated to an irrelevant part of the universe? Or is he in there too, dormant or potent? Why am I using the rhetorical device of rhetorical questions today?

The recent head to head stats don't look good; the circumscribed universe looks confining. Beckett in two starts this year vs. LAAoA: 13.1 IP, 20 H- .345 opponents BA- 11 ER, 2 HR, 2 BB, 14 Ks. In a July 30 start at Fenway: 5.1 IP, 7 ER, 11 H, 8 K, 1 BB. And this start was sandwiched between 1 run in 7 IP vs the yankees, and 2 runs in 6.2 IP vs KC, not amidst a poor streak.

But of course Beckett is the postseason ace, the man who harnesses powers not implied by past performance, who spontaneously delivers something new and amazing, the man who finally lowers the axe after feeding the chicken every day hence (to borrow Bertrand Russell's illustration of the fowl's faulty induction; just because the farmer's always brought food, that doesn't mean tomorrow he won't bring the axe.)

New ace Jon Lester faced LA once this year, back in April: 5 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 2 HR, 2 BB 1 K. DiceK, he of the most unwatchable 18-3 record of all time, had one start, too: 5 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 2 HR, 2 BB, 3 K

But is that all that's relevant? Facing anaheim is similar, so that's one category to project, but postseason performance is another- does Lester's start against Colorado last year count for something now? Is it projectible? Does this baggage travel with each pitch?

From 2005-2007, John Lackey had a 5.53 ERA in 5 starts vs. Boston, and an underwhelming .344 opponents BA. But this year, Lackey was 2-0, allowing 7 H in 16 IP, 5 ER, and 10 K, stifling the Sox for a .132 BA. Which manifestation will show up? And Saunders was also 2-0, 3.38 ERA (though he did walk 9 and only whiff 6.)

Is that all they carry? Of course not; there are plenty of burdens and weights of the world to go around; we all know the Angels have lost 9 straight postseason games to the Sox going back to '86 (the relevance of which greatly decreases as we move backward in time, as we are wont to do), whereas anaheim has won 8 of 9 this year, including two recent sweeps.

So what projects, what predicts? Can we cherry pick; are they in season?

The Angels won 100, best in the league, but were 10th in runs scored, 9th in homers, and not even best in pitching; 5th in starting, 4th in relieving. These runs scored and against are the two legs that make the hypotenuse of their Pythagorean expected record a more humble 89-73, good for 6th in the league in +/-, just barely ahead of the Yankees, and well behind Toronto, who actually finished a run better than Tampa (+104 to +103, giving the bluebirds something to really be sad about; 94 shoulda wins.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Sox were 2nd in runs and 3rd in starting pitching (though 7th in bullpen,) but good for the leagues best +/-, and an expected record of 97 wins; that's 8 ahead of the the angels in the separate Platonic realm of ideal mathematical records. So does that project, or is it the bumbling too too real team that can't win one run games on the road that takes center stage on TBS, where, contrary to popular opinion, there's only one october?

It's tempting to predict one team or another in 5, but that means saying that it will be tied after 4, which amounts to the specific prediction that one particular team will win one specific game; a hazardous guess indeed. Statistical tendencies to understand the transpirings seem not applicable to single perspirings. At the level of sweat, as the joe morgan's of the world know, the players, not the numbers, play the game.

The playoffs are fun because worlds hang in the balance, teetering on the edge of uncertainty and contingency, with no time for regressing to the mean.

Shit happens, crazy shit.

Nonetheless, 95 wins down, 11 to go.

Modal's Sporting Goods; The Best Value For Your Alternate Universe Dollar

'If Buckner had fielder that grounder, then he would have beaten Wilson to the bag.' Maybe, maybe not. Usually, statements are true when they tell it like it is, false otherwise. But how is it with something that never happened?

Answering such counterfactual questions- so called because the first clause is counter to fact- is difficult not just because we don't know how it is, or could have been, but because, being counter to reality, there may not be anything at all to know.

One of the neat things about philosophy is how a little problem like this has cosmic implications. The philosopher David Lewis argued that any possible state of affairs actually exists, but at another possible universe, different from ours in just such ways. For Lewis, there exists a world where Buckner makes the play to retire the side, forcing another extra inning (remember, the tying run scored on the wild pitch), and there's a world where Buckner makes the play but Wilson beats the throw, and on the next play a grounder goes through Boggs' legs, and so forth. (There's also a world where Tampa wins the division and the Yankees finish third. Crazy, I know.)

The reason for this infinite explosion of universes is to provide grounds for the truth of counterfactual statements. Without such universes, there simply is nothing- nothing exists- that makes counterfactuals true or false; there'd be nothing to know. So according to Lewis, 'if Buckner had made the play, Wilson would have been out' is true if the existent possible world where that happens is closer to this one than a world where he makes the play and he's safe.

Don't worry, I'm not going to explain what makes one world closer than another. (Though it is pretty crucial for the plausibility of all this craziness. For more, here's the wikipedia on "modal realism.")

The point of all this, as I so often have to say to my class, is the Most Valuable Player award.

For some reason, the MVP has to play for a contending team. Now, there might be many different definitions of 'valuable', or, 'most' or 'player', I imagine, but its best to be on the same page with these things. If I say "yankees suck," and some yankees fan says "sure, if by 'suck' you mean 'awesome'", besides from forgetting to conjugate properly, this would be a pretty superficial, if short lived, agreement.

I think the definition of the sort of V that one finds in MVP is best put in counterfactual terms- I think the MVP is the player who answers this question: The hypothetical absence of which player would cause that player's team the greatest loss? Or, in other words and letters, if a player x was absent, then which team y would suffer the most? Player X is your MVP. That is, the most valuable thing is the thing which, if taken away, would harm whatever it was taken away from the most.

So if you can live without your hair, as some of us must, but not without your liver, then your liver is more valuable than your hair. And if your team can win without Manny Ramirez, then Manny ain't that valuable.

Now, what does this have to do with contending? As the Manny example indicates, the better a team is, the more able that team is to withstand the loss of any one player, even if that player is great; I'd say there's an inverse relationship between a players' value and the competence of his team. It's the worst teams, not the best, that can least withstand the hypothetical absence of their best player. The closest possible worlds are those where a bad team loses its best player and plays even worser...

'Well now,' one might say, especially if that one is you, 'take away a great player from a last place team, and they're still last.' Well, yes. But take Manny away from a wild card leading team, and they're still a wild card leading team, even though he's put up monster numbers. And standings are relative to the other teams- you can win close to 95 games and not win a division (stupid tampa), so I think its the number of wins that counts. A last place team may win 65 games with a star player, but, who knows, 50 without him. A first place team may win 96 games with a star player, 94 without him, as they are better able to absorb the blow.

Pedroia is getting a lot of MVP attention, and there's no doubt that he's a kick ass ballplayer, and the heart of this team. But if players on noncontending teams or the Twins are counted, as they should be, he doesn't really stand out. Only on the assumption that only a contending non-Minnesota team is worthy of MVP consideration puts him at the top (even though, of course, Mourneau won in '06.)

Pedroia does well in some traditional and count stats, and not in others. The top 3 in BA: Mauer .327, Pedroia .325, and Bradley .324. But Bradley is far and away ahead on OBP: .439, Mauer second at .413, and Pedey's 17th, at .375. Bradley is 3rd in slugging (behind Arod and Quentin), Youkilis 4th, Pedroia 18th at .493. Bradley leads in OPS, Youkilis is 4th, Pedroia's 18th at .868

Bradley has only played in 124 games, which hurts, whereas Pedroia is tied for third in games (and is 3rd in plate appearances, which helps his count stats.) Pedey leads in runs with 118, with the other contenders not in the top 5. He leads in hits with 210 and doubles with 54, but Aubrey Huff, of all people, leads with 329 total bases (Dustin is 4th), and Huff is 3rd in doubles with 48. Huff also leads in extra base hits with 82, Youkilis and Mourneau tied for 4th with 74. Pedroia's 6th with 73. And Youkilis has played plenty of games.

But it's not clear how much these tell us about the counterfactual situation. Some fancier stats aren't decisive, either. Bradley is way ahead in adjusted OPS+ with 165, Youkilis is 4th with 143, Pedroia's not in the top 10. Grady Sizemore leads in Runs Created with 132, Josh Hamilton is next with 125, and Pedroia 3rd with 122, Morneau 7th, Mauer 19th.

It seems to me that stats like 'value over replacement player' (VORP) are in effect counterfactual- if player x were absent and was replaced by an average player, how many 'value points' would the team lose?- in which case such a stat would be the best indicator for MVP. In this category, Pedroia is 3rd, behind Sizemore and ARod. Huff is 4th, Bradley 5th. Youk 8, Mauer 9, Mourneau 12.

But VORP is relative to a position- its easier to have a high VORP at 2nd than at 1st, and also it doesn't count defense. And particularly relevant to my conception of MVP is that it doesn't take into account the idea that a player's value is inversely proportional to his teams awesomeness, as discussed above. (The Indians would probably be more worse without Sizemore than the Sox without Pedey. And of course, as everyone knows, the Yankees would be even better without ARod and with a 42 year old Scott Brosius instead.)

But it's right about here where the fancy numbers exceed my present state of knowledge, so I have nowhere else to go. And there being another me in another possible world who knows this stuff doesn't help. As a philosopher, I'll simply say I think this is the right direction, and let the guys in the lab coats make the call...

That, and far be it for me to argue against the man. Pedey's 20/21 in stolen bases are remarkable, his f yeah attitude is f'in awesome, he curses and gets dirty, and he hits line drives like they were giving him lip.

I'm sure Pedroia is saving no-hitters in other possible worlds, and that if he were gone, and the Sox had to play Cora or Mark Bellhorn at second, they'd be a lot worse. Because they have a 7 game lead on the Yankees. (Ha), they'd probably would be the wild card without him, though of course it would have been a lot less fun. But just Pedey's swing, let alone the defense, speed, and attitude, for now, at least, make me glad I live in this world.... to the extent that I do, of course.

Unto the Breach

I have attended three games at Yankee Stadium; I shan't be attending any more. The Sox' record in those games? 0-3. The Sox' record in October in those games? 0-3.

Below are the box scores for those 3 losses- Game 2 of the 2003 ALCS, Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, and Game 1 of the 2004 ALCS. (click to enlarge.)

Next, the Aaron Boone Game; I had seats in the top tier, and exiting after the trauma involved descending spiraling ramps and hearing 'new york, new york' on an endless loop; a circle of hell indeed. I got hit in the head with beer.

Next year, out for revenge, Schilling gets bombed and injured, and Mussina took a perfect game into the 7th, the Sox explode for 5, comeback falls short, I got hit in the head with beer.

I did not have many happy moments there. I can't say I'm sad to see it go.

Sobyrd Up; The Goggles are Off

Plato contrasted Ideals, known through the pure intellect, with the imperfect world we see. I've been idealizing finesse pitchers lately, Paul Byrd being the salient instance, but what I saw Friday was certainly imperfect.

(Does Byrd just slightly resemble Socrates, by the way?)

Byrd was serviceable, technically delivering a quality start- 3 runs in 6 innings, though that amounts to an entirely common ERA of 4.50 (and being common, 'quantity' rather than 'quality' seems appropriate.) More important to me than the many hard hit balls that went for outs, though, disguising the weak showing, was the real lack of artistry on the mound. There was no one pitch sequence that wowed me; the art critics' epithets of 'pedestrian' and 'derivative' sprung to mind during this underwhelming performance. I never oohed nor ahhed. Pitches tailed back over the middle of the plate, Tek had to cross over, curveballs hung, suspended in mid air.

Worse, I felt critical of his approach to lefthanded hitters, rather than delighted; there was no magic, no suspension of disbelief, just a guy with his hand up a puppet's butt (as they say.) Byrd doesn't go inside enough on lefties, which amounts to pitching with one hand tied behind his back. After the Rolen double in the second, he got a called strike on a rare inside fastball to the lefthanded Zaun, which straighted him up. He then accidentally threw a changeup in, which also surprised Zaun, called for strike 2. Then he threw a backdoor curve that didn't even make it back to the outside corner, but Zaun drilled an RBI double to left anyway, obviously looking for the pitch away; Zaun saw through the smoke and mirrors, and even after two in, didn't think lightning would strike thrice.

Byrd has terrible splits this year; he pitches well against righties, .249 BA/.277 OBP/.418 SLG, but .313/.355/.528 against lefties (that's an .883 OPS). Of his 32 walks all year, 24 are to lefties, the asymmetry of which suggests trepidation, and 5 of his 7 hbp's are against righties, suggesting he goes in only to them. Remy called Byrd's "purpose pitch" up and in to Vernon Wells; finesse pitchers must pull off the illusion of looking like power guys sometimes. But to lefties too; they're not just righties in a mirror.

I think a large part of Mussina's renaissance this year has been his improvement throwing the front-door fastball to lefthanded hitters; it looks like its coming inside off the plate from the righthanded pitcher, but moves back over the inside corner. Byrd would benefit greatly from that pitch. (Mussina in 2008: .858 OPS vs. righties, .592 vs. lefties. In 2007, .822 OPS vs. righties, .799 vs. lefties.)

That pitch is magic, after all; it bends backwards, going against the grain, back from whence it came. It hypnotizes; lefties freeze in their tracks.

And as Derek Lowe showed both Terrence Long and Adam Melhuse in the '03 ALDS, that pitch comes about as close to approaching a Platonic Ideal as any one pitch can.

Byrden of Proof; off-day update*

Start with a quote: "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that," John Stuart Mill once wrote.

Elaborate: If he can't refute the other side, Mill continued in On Liberty, he hasn't grounds for his position, and if he hasn't understood why another would think differently, he doesn't truly understand his own view.

Show the relevance: Not everyone likes Byrd as much as I seem to, an opinion you may know from such blog posts as yesterday's (of which this is an update), and they have good reasons which I must face. For a hard hitting case towards that end, (though also a quite flattering reference to yours truly) see Jere's as always on-the-ball blog.

And in case you're into "evidence" culled from "objective reality" (weirdo), here are some statistical measurements:

Byrd: 98 ERA+, 101 with the Sox, 1.31 whip. With the Sox, 4.74 K/9, 1 HR and 1 BB per 4.75 IP, .792 opponents OPS overall, .826 with the Sox.

Wakefield: 109 ERA+, 1.21 whip, 1 HR per 6.8 IP, 2.9 BB/9, 5.72 K/9, and only .699 opponents OPS.

My ideological preference for finesse pitchers can blind me to the facts on the ground, making me a hawk for Byrd. But I can see the other side. As long as it's not because Byrd's tipping his hand, I'm ok with that.

End with a rallying cry: San Dimas high school football rules!

* This blog post contains almost 50% recycled material. Go green!

Hope Stick

Everyone's got that warm heartfelt emotional meaningful vs. cold logical mathematical dispassionate dichotomy going. So while the numbers assure us- the Sox lead the Yankees by 6 games in the wild card race with only 29 games remaining, and according to some metric listed on the ESPN standings page, the Sox have an 87.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, whereas the Yankees have a minuscule 2.3, this 3-2 Yankees come from behind win gives the Yankees warm heartfelt emotional hope.

And when there's hope, the numbers be damned. Hope, optimism, determination yielding the miraculous, spring in your step joy in tomorrow. Yankee fans shouldn't have that. Though the odds are against them, they're not dead yet. The Sox missed their chance to put the nail in the coffin, to bury the Yanks along with their stadium. Though the numbers may hold up, for one day, at least, the Yanks get to transcend the numbers, to feel, to hope, to dream, to revel in the alleged meaning of their legacy, to ignore the cold hard numerical financial reality of leaving their traditional home.

Yet somehow the YES network got the whole emotional heartful meaningful vs. cold numbers thing wrong. During the 8th inning, they played a promo for Yankee stadiums' final hurrah with maudlin music and clips of Yankees legends with angelic auras gazing meaningfully into the distance, towards the end of which Kay's voiceover says 'come celebrate the final season of Yankee Stadium with Yankees calculator day. The first 15, 000 fans get a Yankees team calculator...'

Nothing says 'meaning and sentiment' like a calculator. And of course, they'd need one to calculate the astronomical discrepancy between the payrolls of the yanks and rays, the team taking their place in the postseason.

But I bristle. I can't get over Francona giving them hope; you just can't pitch to Giambi as a pinch hitter with two outs as the tying run in the 7th with first base open. Walk Giambi, you put the tying run on base, yes, but it's Damon up with two down, and then potentially Jeter, and neither home run hitters. Against the Yankees, I'm always defensive. Minimize the catastrophe; avoid the agony. Don't gamble on getting Giambi to pop out, even if that's the likely scenario. Against the Yankees, do whatever you can possibly do to avoid the worst case scenario, the humiliation. If your OBP is less than .500, the number says you're more likely to get out than not. But you can't give them hope, the hope that goes over and above the numbers. It's the Yankees, goddam it. I just can't stand to let them have a hero, to be dramatic, to beat the odds, to put dollar bills in the thongs of Mystique and Aura. Those women should put on reasonable clothes and take a nice desk job, by the book. Maybe some number crunching. Nothing too exciting.

Numbers Tell You Everything, Except For What They Leave Out; 756*

Rob Neyer brought up the 756* thing again. No game Thursday, so, why not?

Some people go around all the time thinking that numbers can't capture meaning. 'Cold' and 'calculating' are associatively and alliteratively linked, and cliched images of emotionless logical number crunching robots are so common as to be... cliches. Religions decry the scientific worldview that wishes to 'reduce' meaning and quality to 'mere' quantity. People complain about not wanting to be a statistic (before participating in a focus group.) Some people laud qualities that defy quantitation- sometimes called 'intangibles'- as if this defiance were a mark of greatness, rather than non-existence.

So for these folks, what's the big deal about 756*? Numbers never determined meaning before, why should they in this case? These people are free to see meaning, greatness, and intangibility wherever they want, without the constraints of numbers. They shouldn't need an asterisk to tell them about the meaning of a record. 762 happened, so what? They can always tell tale tales about whoever they once saw play the game.

But of course some may be more scientific in their temperament. They may suppose that greatness, for instance, is a function of the numbers, and so is entirely determined by them.

For these folks, there's two ways to go. Either greatness is a function of old fashioned tally count-em stats which aren't context (i.e. ballpark, era, league difficulty) sensitive, like homers and wins, or greatness is a function of new fangled more sophisticated metrics that do compare players to their league or across eras (VORP, win shares, OPS+).

For folks who go the second way of the second way, home runs don't figure especially prominently anyway; not all home runs are created equal, after all, for a home run by itself doesn't tell you if it was hit in whiffleball, the no-splitter-no-slider-no-ethnicity 1920's, or in 1968.

It remains, then, that 756* should only be a problem for those who want the relative greatness of all those players who played at different times to be entirely determined by numbers that fail to present meaningful standards of comparison of players at different times. In short, 756* should only be a problem if you want greatness determined by the wrong numbers.

So the solution, then, is not asterisks, or divided categories- most homeruns for a player who only played against white people, most homeruns for someone with backne- but realizing why context-insensitive numbers have never been valuable for comparing different players at different times anyway, and so seeing why many records are superficial to begin with.

The only problem with the steroids, then, for this way of looking at things, is that only some people used them. But on the assumption that steroid use was widespread in this era, such that there's a relatively level playing field, even if a rampaging roider broke a count 'em record, they might not stand out in their own era, and it'll take that much more for the OPS+ to go up a tick.

Though perhaps a truism, by itself, a record is just another instance of one person getting more somethings than another person. Which records matter, and why, vary greatly, and for many different reasons. Some symbolize something beyond the sport- 715 could mean that it only took black players one generation to break an old white man's record, but that's sociological, not strictly about baseball, and most records don't have such meanings. And as far as baseball goes, few individual record breaking moments are as memorable or meaningful as moments of a team's victory or defeat; Dave Roberts vs. Barry Bonds, steroids or not? Please.

The idea that records symbolize some sort of purity, the good old days of baseball is- and always has been- a myth. Steroids happened, racism happened, crappy gloves and dirty dead balls that only went 250 feet happened; no number remains unscuffed by its times. Sure, there's a sentimental attraction in remembering what you read on baseball cards, but these numbers as indicators of reality or predictors of the future are inaccurate, and they probably never determined meaning anyway. If so, they fail as science, and they fail as religion.

Numbers are everywhere. If we like baseball numbers, I think it's the baseball, not the numbers, that really matters. The numbers are just there to help. They're not everything. Except for two numbers. 2004 and 2007. I like those.

Yankees Acquire Name and Brand of Ivan Rodriguez, for Kyle Farnssomething

The Yankees today acquired a brand name 36 year old catcher for a relief pitcher, the lowest form of baseball celebrity. Baseball's extras, really, is what they are.

This brand name catcher had an road OPS of .686 last year and .671 this year (with only 7 XB hits) away from his home park , which the Yankees, in related talks, failed to acquire.

The current replaceable Yankee catcher, a man so not famous that he's easily confused with two of his brothers, only had a .581 OPS this year, but Molina- whichever one it is that catches for the Yankees- had nabbed 47.3% of attempted base stealers this year, better than the Great Famous Original Pudge's average of around 34 % over the last 2 years.

The Yanks of course extended their largesse in return for the Famous Catcher in the form of Kyle Farnssomething, who before his most recent outing had held opponents scoreless in his 11 appearances. Farnswhatever had filled up the hole in the bullpen that had been opened by the move to the starting rotation of the Very Famous And Hyped Fat Prospect.

But as the Yankees retain the option of simply playing commercials during the 8th inning, this was deemed not to be a problem.

Small Ball Doesn't Work; Sox Swept in Anaheim, 5-3

Losing to the Angels is like losing to a guy who spins his foosball players; you concede they hit the ball, and that they scored more, but you're just not sure how much credit they should get.

Much is made of the Angels' aggressive small ball style, but I don't like it. They swing at everything, and so I don't know that it isn't random when they do hit the ball. They look to me like a team with a lower on-base percentage than batting average.

The Sox are disciplined; patience, which suggests passivity, isn't the right word. The Angels, though talented, are wild and uncontrolled. They are Nuke LaLoosh to the Sox's Crash.

It's obvious that the organizations have different values. The Angels have only 1 player with an OBP above .350 (Chone Figgins at .379), and only 3 qualifiers above .310. Egregiously, they have 7 players with at least 90 AB's below .315 in OBP, including qualifiers Mathews Jr and Anderson, and Jeff Mathis way down at .288.

Compare the Sox, with 8 players above .350 in OBP, including Casey (129 AB's) at.418, and qualifiers Drew .410, Ramirez .396, and Youkilis .382. The Sox have just 3 players with at least 90 AB's below .315 in OBP, and two are catchers.

National media types are inclined to call the Sox a "moneyball team", and Beane is famously cited as saying his shit doesn't work in the playoffs. But the Sox have trounced the Angels, 6 games to 0, over the last two A.L. Division Series (in '04 and '07. You should know this.) It's the Angels' shit that doesn't work in the postseason, because they are the far inferior offensive team- the Sox have outscored the Angels by 74 runs this season- and they're only even in pitching (with the Sox staff ERA at 3.84, the starters 3.77, and the Angels staff at 3.81, the starters 3.74)

The Angels win with pitching, not with small ball. And perhaps with Luck; the Angels' run differential is a mere +33, to the Sox' +87.

The philosopher Dan Dennett talks of "elbow room" for free will in a deterministic universe. Maybe, just maybe, says the ghost of Joe Morgan past, small ball creates some "elbow room" in the deterministic universe of wins as a function of random run distribution (i.e. the expected record based on +/-.)

Maybe. But a team with such a low OBP playing to the score only works with great pitching, and those goddam foosball spinners are f'ing lucky and should learn to play the real way.

The Golden Mean Team; The All-Time Average Red Sox

For Aristotle, virtue lay between two extremes. Take social conduct for example. One extreme is being a kiss-ass, the other extreme is being an asshole. In between lies friendliness.

This is the doctrine of the Golden Mean, the Middle Path, the Warm Porridge.

Towards celebrating Aristotle's idea, and because this year's All-Star break is excessively long, I've compiled the Golden Mean Team: the Most Average Red Sox Team of All Time (well, just going back to 1986, actually.)

These are not your All-Time Great Sox, with Williams in left, Boggs at third and Fisk behind the dish. And these are not the comically poor Sox, with whoever the hell they had in the 1920's, way before this.

No, this is the The Golden Mean Team, the most middling, mediocre, lump of average Red Sox players imaginable by someone with 50th percentile creativity.

So, a bit about method.

OPS+ is OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) adjusted for ballpark and league, with 100 defined as league average. ERA+ is basically the same for ERA, again with 100 defined as league average.

I figured the most average Red Sox team would be composed of players whose seasons were as close to 100 in OPS+ or ERA+ as possible.

I've named a starter for each position, a 5 man starting rotation, and a closer.

In the case of ties- to be expected when dealing with such mediocrity- I went with the player whose career OPS+ or ERA+ was closest to 100.

So now, without making a federal case about it, here are the few, the moderately happy few, whose run of the mill contributions make up the Golden Mean Team, the All-Time (well, since 1986) Average, the Mediocre, the you-win-some-you-lose-some Boston Red Sox.

Position/Name/Year/Season OPS+ or ERA+/ (Career OPS+ or ERA+)

• C Scott Hatteberg, 1997: 103 (101)
• 1B Carlos Quintana, 1990: 103 (93)
• 2B Marty Barrett, 1986: 100 (86)
• SS John Valentin, 1996: 104 (109)
• 3B Scott Cooper, 1992: 100 (90)

• LF Troy Oleary, 1998: 99 (97)
• CF Carl Everett, 2001: 97 (107)
• RF Darren Bragg, 1999: 99 (85)
• DH Dante Bichette, 2001: 103 (106)

The cleanup hitter could hit 9th on this team. And vice versa.

Starting Rotation

1. John Burkett, 2002: 101 (99)
2. Hideo Nomo, 2001: 101 (97)
3. Bruce Hurst, 1987: 103 (104)
4. Tim Wakefield, 2004: 100 (108)
5. Mike Boddicker, 1989: 103 (108)

Closer:

1. Bob Stanely, 1986: 96 (118)

Somewhat honorable but fairly indifferent mention goes to the entire 2005 Red Sox starting rotation. Without doing any more research, I'm guessing this is the most mediocre starting rotation of all time.

Wakefield at 109, Bronson Arroyo: 100 (106), Matt Clement: 99 (96), David Wells: 102 (108), and Wade Milller: 92 (110)

So there you have it, the Boston Salieris. These guys get awards for attendance. A living room full of participation trophies. They have 2.4 kids. They put the meh in mediocre. Between the ages of 40 and 70 they may experience erectile dysfunction.

I'll stop there. That joke's OPS+ is 100. If that.

Adjusted Legendary+; Schilling, Mussina and the Hall of Fame

Two caveats before we begin.

First, I'm not entirely sure this kind of thing is kosher, but this post is an expanded version of a comment I left on this Joy of Sox post. But as a footnote using-academic who's also busted people for plagiarism, I figure I can get away with it on the strength of self-anointed authority alone. (They call this bootstrapping, I think.)

Second, though this one's based on new fangled sciencey numbers, I do end on a philosophimical note.

So with only some further ado, there's been talk of Schilling's and Mike Mussina's Hall of Fame candidacy recently. (The comment I posted was in response to a discussion of the latter's.)

Judging Hall of Fame candidacy requires comparing pitchers from different eras, and ERA+ is a one-stop metric that shows how good a pitcher is relative to the league (and thus era) in which he pitched.

More precisely, and to quote Joy of Sox from the same post,

"ERA+ is the ratio of the league's ERA, adjusted to the pitcher's ballpark, to that of the pitcher. 100 is league average. Top-shelf starters will finish their seasons with ERA+s around 140."

For completeness, here's the all-time career list. For relevance, perhaps gerrymandered, here's a condensed list. Pedro Martinez, at 157, is far and away the best all time. Roger Clemens, that cheating douche, is at 143. Johan Santana 141. Sandy Koufax, 131.

Tom Seaver, a Hall of Famer, is at 127, which is the same ERA+ as Curt Schilling and John Smoltz. Jim Palmer, a HoF'er, is at 126.

Juan Marichal, who's in the Hall, has a 123 career ERA+. Mike Mussina has a 122, which is better than HoF'ers Don Drysdale's 121 and Warren Spahn's 118.

In the comments of his post, Joy of Sox suggested that Mussina's comparables are Schilling and Marichal.

So, that's the backstory.

According to my calculations, and by 'calculations' I mean 'copying from columns I see',

Mussina's 6 best full seasons for ERA+ are 163 (in the strike year of '94), 157, 145, 142, 137, and 134 (and no more above 130.) But he's also had 6 seasons at 109 or lower, including 3 out of the last 4 under 100 (not including this current bounce-back year.)

Juan Marichal's 5 best seasons of ERA+ were 169, 168, 167, 144, and 132, (and no more over 130), and had only 4 seasons of lower than 113 (not counting his last two seasons, which totalled 60 innings), though 3 were under 100 (98, 97. 95)

As a starter, Curt Schilling has 4 seasons in the 150's, 2 in the 140's, and 3 more in the 130's. In seasons with at least 90 IP, he's had just 1 season under 100- 99 in '93- and just one other under 120.

It looks to me that Marichal's peak was better than Mussina's in the same amount of time, and Schilling has been better for a longer period of time than Mussina.

Burt Blyleven has just missed the cut for the Hall many times, and is the recent archetype of the borderline Hall candidate. His career ERA+ is 118, but a quick glance at Burt Blyleven's ERA+ numbers show him to be the better comparison to Mussina. Blyleven recorded 6 seasons over 130 (158, 151, 144, 142, 140, 134), but 7 under 110.

I don't know where exactly the cut off should be, but it might very well be around Blylevan and Mussina. And as of now, Blyleven has 1000 more K's than Mussina. Mussina might reach 3,000 k's (he's around 2700), and he might get pretty close to 300 wins, which obviously would help his candidacy.

At its best, the Hall might represent the dialectical synthesis of statistics and legend, of quantity and perception.

And I think the numbers show Mussina to fit a certain perceptual type; not quite the ace, never the very best pitcher, not the The Man you want on the mound in the big game, but instead a very good pitcher for a long time.

Schilling, on the other hand, has the regular season numbers to match his well-documented postseason heroics; for an entire decade, he was one of the very top pitchers in the game, and when healthy, never mediocre. I think Schilling is in.

One way to look at the debate is whether certain milestone numbers are both necessary and sufficient for Hall entry, or whether such numbers are only necessary, but insufficient without the stuff that legends are made of.

In other words, there's a symbolic debate here; is the Hall exclusively for the very best, those few players of each generation who attained the revered status as The Man, the kind of guy the old timers tell tall tales about, or is it also for those players who performed well-above league averages for a long period of time, but never reached the heroic levels that encourage the formation of legends in addition to statistical analysis?

I don't know. I just work here.