The Long-Awaited Sequel to $%*# the Heck!

Courtesy of your friend and mine, Ed Hardiman

I lied. Ed Hardiman is not my friend. He is a douche. He is a douche that should have all of his writings e-burned. He should have made like that mysterious 3rd sibling on Family Matters and disappeared into the pornography business after several seasons of providing absolutely no value to anyone. But no, he writes on. And therefore, so do I. I apologize, but this post is a little outdated (let's pretend the World Series hasn't happened yet! shhhhh).

Look the simple fact is nobody really knows who will win the World Series though the bookies pretty much say it will be the Red Sox faster than you can say Yorvit Torrealba.

Because the bookies have absolutely no interest in preventing their gamblers from making abnormal returns on their bets, I'm going to assume that their belief was completely arbitrary.

While slobbering SABR devotees are busy rounding up archaic theorems and equations to hyper-complicate the observable we can dispense with all that twaddle by pointing out when you call inaccurate predictions "over or under performance" you've essentially found a harder way to avoid admitting you were flat out wrong.

I'm starting to think Hardiman is aware of this blog somehow. He fixed his problem of spelling it "SABER", and I remember deriding him for that when he said some really stupid things about sabermetrics.

Spot on again, Ed. Over and under performance are completely illegitimate concepts, because there is absolutely no luck whatsoever in determining where a ball lands when someone swings a bat at a very fast speed trying to hit a ball traveling at a very fast speed, often with unexpected movement.

Nope here at the Fowl Line we use the soundest of all predictors, SWAG. Scientific Wild BLEEP Guessing is the bedrock of advancement in all fields of human endeavor. Considered only slightly less accurate than currency flipping, SWAG allows us to synthesize all the available data into an actionable conclusion.

I can only assume that the "A" stands for "Ass". Shouldn't it be hyphenated to "Wild", or like, attached to the end of it a la "wildass" or something? You know what, fuck it. No benefit of the doubt. It's tied to "guessing". Ed is describing a new thing called "Ass-Guessing". Wild Ass Guessing.....just doesn't click, does it?

What happens next, I have no answer for. It makes less sense than anything I've ever read in my life.

Take for example milk. At some point somebody asked the question, what would happen if we BLEEP ed on one of those udders? Their dumb as a bag of flint arrowheads buddy ended up getting gored by a bull after filling his mouth with warm milk. The bull of course was the 1st example of "cannot be determined from evidence given" which is a whole other blog.

Anyone want to try to decipher that? Anyone?

The World Series comes down to one simple question. Can a team playing at sea level beat a team that doesn't? Thanks to the All Star game we can answer that question in the affirmative. Yep, that useless as a third pinkie exercise in mid-season dullness provides us with all the information we need to have a 50% chance of being correct. The Red Sox will prevail by winning four games and the Rockies will win slightly less. This of course doesn't preclude the Rockies from winning the Series.

There are two options here.

1) Ed is being serious, and really feels like the winner of the All-Star Game has a bearing on the World Series. If this is the case, he's excited to announce that if we take it into consideration, we now have a 50% chance of being correct, or the same as just flipping a coin.
2) (more likely) Ed is joking about the All-Star Game being important, and claiming that using it we can have a 50% chance of being right, or no improvement over a random guess. Wasn't there some sort of big deal about the All-Star Game starting to count for something at some point in recent years?

That's the beauty of SWAG it leaves loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. Plus you can run other SWAG simulations like; who has the most foreign born players, the Red Sox have 9, the Rockies 7. Or you can do it by coolest name and there the Rockies Yorvit Torrealba edges Daisuke Matsuzaka by a hair.

Now I'm positive that Ed has no clue the All-Star game affects the World Series. He just compared it to picking a favorite by counting foreign-born players. Also Daisuke Matsuzaka has a better name than Torrealba.

There's also a SWAG cuisine angle you could use, unfortunately Rocky Mountain Oysters will never be as tasty as Boston's Oyster House Clam Chowder. You could go by mascots, the Rockies mascot is a dinosaur named "Dinger" while Boston's mascot is the cryogenically frozen head of Ted Williams, once again its advantage Sox…

Is there a SWAG Team OPS+/ERA+ angle or SWAG league-translated record angle or SWAG Pythagenport record angle we could use? I mean clearly, like those other methods, we're just ass-guessing here, and wildly so. I just like them better because they sound outrageously cool. There's no way to actually pick a favorite.

No matter how you slice it SWAG will get you to as a good a guess as any other system.

It will get you just as good a guess as:

1) Sleeping
2) Eating a Hamburger
3) Watching that episode of Home Improvement where the boys have to stay overnight at Al's house.
4) Playing a pickup basketball game.
5) Reading Lord of the Flies

Things it will not get you just as good a guess as:

1) Knowing one random stat about a player on either team
or
2) Vaguely paying attention to the game of baseball. My mother, who in November is still rooting for the Chicago Cubs to lose baseball games they aren't even playing, could tell you that the Red Sox were favored. People who hate baseball, and don't pay attention to it at all knew.

So drop the slide rules, break out an ice cold Bladderweiser® and enjoy the Series. I'll be covering the game from the press box and you know what? When the Series is over I'll mumble to myself, "I knew it all along…"

Nope. Fuck you. I sat through the World Series recalculating the odds on my computer of each team winning it all after every pitch. I ate prunes and listened to "White and Nerdy" on repeat thanks to YouTube during the games. It was one of the saddest times of my life seeing that 99.99834% chance for the Red Sox turn to 100%.

Slobbermetrics

This is handsdown one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It was pointed out on Fire Joe Morgan, where Ken Tremendous decided against making an entry on it. It pisses me off way too much to not write about it though. Take it away, Ed Hardiman.

Slobbermetrics, How Bill James and Math Nearly Destroyed Baseball

Oh don't you count out slobbermetricians by using that word "nearly".....they're only gaining momentum in this war! They're still well on their way to destroying baseball! More and more of them are deviously acquiring jobs working for baseball teams because ::gasp:: baseball team front offices want smart people to help make their teams better! They say that every time someone mentions a player's RC27, a drop of magic leaves the great sport of baseball forever. Before 2009, I predict that slobbermetricians will simulate all baseball games by having computers spit out random numbers from PECOTA projections to determine the outcome of each at-bat. Who else agrees?

Sabermetrics, is the Scientology of baseball. It all started in a tiny, airless, room, where the guy who got picked last in Little League, perfected his revenge. This handy guide will help clear up the wildest misconceptions spread by this extremely annoying and exceedingly irrelevant cult.

Not fair! I doubt Bill James was that nerd picked last in Little League. He was, however, the last man picked from Kansas to join the army in the Vietnam War. He majored in traditionally calculator-nerd oriented English and Economics (presumably being homeschooled by his mother). And not all nerds sucked in Little League. Even I, the nerdiest of nerds was a first round Little League draft pick when I was 12 (woohoo! claim to fame, baby!). And my team was 13-5 that year, so suck on that, Ed.

Definition.
Sabermetrics is also known as, long winded pointless dissertation, insufferable boors with calculators, or guys with pocket protectors.

I can only conclude from this that you think "sabermetrics" are people rather than statistical measurements.

If you're like me, you don't need to know the equation for cracking oil to figure out you got a batch of bad gas in your car.

This has everything to do with baseball.

Or live near the Devil Rays or Royals, to realize beauty might be skin deep but bad goes all the way through.

This is not a sentence. It's too bad you don't buy into wonky English-sentence-making formulas, as I do.

Here's my absolute favorite example of recent memory of how conventional statistics and wisdom can be deceiving, and how sabermetrics can enlighten people to a player's true value.

Player X, in 2006, hit .260, but also had 29 HR and 103 RBI. Pretty valuable guy, right?

What if I told you that Player X is Jeff Francoeur, and that his grotesque .293 OBP hurts his value to the point where he has not only a poor .246 EqA, but also a -1.0 VORP? This means that the Braves would actually have been a little better off calling up a typical AAA corner outfielder to hit for Francoeur. Are you really going to dismiss important information like that as nonsense?

Ah who am I kidding, you probably think "Jeff Francoeur" is some sort of 17th century explorer trying to strike gold for France.

Humor.

Sabermites believe they have a sense of humor. Sadly, it can only be expressed mathmatically.

When Carl Everett's position in Baseball Prospectus 2007 was listed as "Nuisance" rather than "DH", and "Strom Thurmond" and "Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise" were listed as PECOTA comparables for Julio Franco, I deeply wondered what type of mathematical equations had led them to those jokes.

Reality.
Using pseudo-algebraic conclusions to describe the infinite intangibles of great baseball is like using cement to describe Mozart. Abstract baseball minutia stacked like pancakes doesn't get around the real consistent opinion voiced by those who watch baseball daily and this churns the guts of Sabermites.

I'd like to see cement write one of Mozart's symphonies accurate to within 4-5 notes.

Math is largely used to weed out using "intangibles" as an explanation for why a baseball player is effective. "Intangibles" tell you nothing. Numbers can explain why the White Sox didn't get the job done in 2006 and are a bad team now(it has nothing to do with losing Aaron Rowand's intensity!), or why a team as bad as the Cardinals from last year was able to win a World Series (it has nothing to do with the fire burning in David Eckstein's heart!). If you don't like information, you can go back in time and make pencils out of 100% lead and construct buildings with astronomical amounts of asbestos, if that makes you happy.

Also, the term "Slobbermetricians" is preferable to "Sabermites". It's more funnierest. And you're right, I bet they've never been to a baseball game, or like baseball, or even been outside. They just need SOMETHING to calculate (lucky thing someone started putting stats on computers!) during the lunch hour of their home school session.

Initialize.
Acronyms sow maximum confusion. Sabermites concoct bewildering thickets of initials around feeble wild BLEEP guessing. EqA's are as likely to stick a homemade shank in VORP's as they are to end up drunk at Bill James annual Christmas party where King Herod's win shares always make trading for the baby Jesus look silly.

We now need to seek a new way to quickly and accurately use the terms "NASA", "FCC", and "IRS" in casual conversation, because these sow maximum confusion.

I guess people just take a wild guess when they determine that Adam Dunn's EqA has been above average in recent seasons despite low batting averages. Random, really. It was equally possible for Slobbermetricians to determine Neifi Perez is very valuable.

Bill James' Christmas parties sound like a rockin good time.

Equate.

Never allow anyone near the prime equation of sabermetrics, A+B=Shut the Hell Up. This is sports for math club members.

Let A = "Ed" and let B = "Hardiman". HAH! I have a sense of humor that can only be expressed mathematically!

Gross Tonnage.

The complicated formula for "Hey that guy just bunted the runner to second..." would fill this entire page. SABER stat-bot hysteria amply illustrates the "Star Trek Factor," now that Kirk's too fat to worship, Sabermites invented an arcane statistical abstract to replace dialectic Klingon arguments that made their life worth living...

The formula for "Hey that guy just bunted the runner to second" is either "1-3 (sac)", "2-3 (sac)", "3-4 (sac)" or "5-3 (sac)". So you'd probably have to use like 150 pt font and type sideways.

Strength of Nattering (SON).

Sabermite's tirelessly redefine everything in SABER-speak, until, the non-SABER person drops from exhaustion or retreats to a sport like ice curling.

Dude, is that apostrophe supposed to be there? This entire thing has been syntactically and gramatically a mess. You put as much effort into proofreading things you publish as you did to understand exactly what the study of sabermetrics is. For example, the acronym is "SABR" not "SABER".

I think I'll dedicate the rest of my life to finding a way to sabermetrically analyze ice curling. Thanks for tipping me off to a possible escape route.

Value.

According to SABER dogma, a single just isn't worth a double. Take that Ty Cobb, you BLEEP because 75% of your hits aren't all that and a bag of SABER chips.

What....the....fuck?

Did I miss something here? Slobbermetricians think singles aren't good beacuse they aren't doubles? Is that what they work on all day in their parents' basements?

Uh oh, you used "75%" in this part. Careful. 75% is a number. You just researched something, and determined that about 3/4 of Cobb's hits were singles. The inner slobbermetrician is showing in you Hardiman! Careful, before you start using facts REGULARLY! Oh man, scary thought, you're going nerd, you can't help but give in......

Slide Rule

Its not, never slide head first, its never attend a game of baseball without a slide rule, so you'll have something to look at.

Always carry one, right next to my abacus and my TI-89 calculator.

Despite not even saying anything in this article, you managed to contradict yourself, because to think a Slobbermite (drooling insect?) would ever waste his time outside, at a baseball game, is ridiculous.

Worship the Stat Gods

Barry Bonds is a perfect example, the thought of losing all those succulent steroid drenched numbers sends the average Sabermite into a slobbery, mad dog, frenzy. They would rather chew off the non-math lobe of their brain than let go, or admit, that Barry might indeed be full of nincompoop

Another valid point. Slobbermetricalicians have never heard of steroids (though if they ever want to get a date, they might need to take them to bulk up a tad!), and drool regularly when they hear about Barry Bonds's .609 OBP in 2004, like a dog trained to listen for a bell before being fed.

What Can You Do?

I know the answer to every problem is "sing a song" but if organizing a world wide series of concerts is beyond your grasp, try these simple SABER killing phrases:

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
Albert Einstein

I challenge you, Ed, to find a slobbermedical statistic that is useless and tells you nothing about a player's performance.

"The last time I checked baseball is best played on a field and not on a calculator."

Last time I checked, articles are best written when you have a clue as to what the fuck you're bashing as opposed to wildly making claims about something being stupid. For example, right now, I am bashing an arrogant, uninformed, trashhole of a writer who probably looked up the acronyms of several sabermetric stats, heard them used in conversation, decided he was too stupid to figure out what significance they might hold, so instead tried to make fun of them to cover up the fact that his pea-brain couldn't muster up the energy to learn something more about a topic that it's supposedly his job to write about. Am I close, Ed? Am I close? Are you sure that "Ed Hardiman" isn't a pseudonym for Bruce Jenkins or Joe Morgan?

"People who count don't."

Fine. Let the education system stop at preschool so that counting is never taught to anyone. You've clearly established yourself as a person who believes learning anything new isn't worth your time.