THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Are you being serious, or did you just not watch the last five seconds?

Disregarding the campiness of it all, it’s actually pretty informative and presents the issue in a fair light.  I’m not sure why half the people on lookoutlanding were gnashing their teeth about it.  The hilariousness was a bonus, especially the self-deprecation and complete lack of shame displayed by Bowden.

...and now I know why the Royals continue to lose.  Bowden acted about as expected.

This really reminded me of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit!” Good, objective information.  Tits jokes.

It’s just so bizarre and out of place. I had previously seen part of his first show dealing with the arbitration process and it was alright. On the internet they are free from many of the restrictions that a show on ESPN might have, so he shouldn’t have to resort to this lowest common denominator of sound bytes and T&A.

Link?

(this my favorite blog in the world but it’s a usability nightmare!)

I think it would be more precise to say “great guests.” Bowden’s value added to the program is questionable.  I suppose he asked questions…

The quality of the answers far outstripped the quality of the questions.

Alex: it was an embedded link and now that I’m at the office, I see it is blocked.  When I get home, I’ll post a link.

Dave: you can skip over the cheesy parts (i.e., anything to do with his girlfriend).  Take that away, and it was a great video.

Dayton Moore is the man.

“we look at runs scored”

Now be nice to Dayton: he quickly said “runs created” right after that.  He corrected himself.

It’s clear that the Runs Created that Dayton looks at is R+RBI-HR, which is to say, Runs Produced.

Tango, would you be willing to go on his show then?

Me?  No, I don’t do any interviews other than email.  MGL would be fantastic though.

When I first say Epstein I thought he was a player. Daniels could have passed for one of those basement bloggers. And both are better GMs than Bowden.

I had no idea Jon Daniels was really 13 years old.

And what was with the random innuendo?  Such a bizarre video.

The random innuendo was a very stupid gimmick.  Oh, stats are boring, let’s occasionally show a chick trying way to hard to be hot...that might make up for it. 

You want to suck people into a clip like that?  Show more Epstein and Upton quotes, everyone loves those two.  Sneak some Cameron and Goldstein in to clarify points made by the GMs.  So many better ways to conceptualize it for a lay fan…

If I showed that clip to my former college teammates they’d say “huh, what was that about?  What was up with the hot chick? Who’s Jim Bowden?” That video has zero teaching value.

On the flip side, it was funny to watch Dayton obviously struggle to make simple comments about metrics.

Stats ARE boring.  And the girl stuff makes up about 2% of the entire clip, and it’s clearly ridiculously cheesy on purpose.

To be honest, the typical layfan is probably going to be a little confused by this video, as it’s still pretty technical.  I believe the greatest value from it is the recognition from three GM’s (one successful, one semi-successful, one not successful at all) that statistics are important in player analysis, especially when coupled with scouting.  Bowden does a great job of explaining how statistics could’ve helped him not make stupid moves.

The interview with Upton was nice, almost a “gotcha,” even if Bowden did present statistics to him in a somewhat demeaning way (i.e. “xyz").  It’s similar to how people would like to present statistics to Joe Morgan; appeal to their self-interest.

It was somewhat farcical yes (and hilarious), but I did think it was pretty informative regarding how some GM’s think.  I especially liked Theo’s stress on “adjusting” stats.