Suppose Jeff Karstens (RHP-PIT) had walked Chris B. Young in the 8th inning today but retired the next four batters. He would have joined select company: He would have had a very specific thing in common with exactly one other pitcher.
Describe that "thing in common" exactly, and name that other pitcher.
"If it's so overrated then how come you don't see more closers like Hoffman and Rivera?"
--ESPN.com "Featured Comment" in response to an article about baseball's "closer" being the most overrated position in sports.
My first reaction was like the duck in the insurance ads.
My second was to decide whether to bother to work out a concise explanation for why that comment is just so misguided.
We don't see "more closers like Hoffman and Rivera" PRECISELY BECAUSE so many people overrate the work output of that position, and so overrate a particular counting stat (saves) they it takes people too long to realize that Armando Benitez, Jorge Julio, Todd Jones, etc., etc., just aren't any good.
The commenter's question would be valid if we were perfect judges of player ability but terrible judges of which positions matter most -- that is, if we didn't understand comparative advantage, like for example if some baseball manager inexplicably thought the most important defensive position were first base and so always put his best defenders at first.
"It's time to shun the lust for gold medals and embrace dignity in competing cleanly at the Olympics. " --caption to the top photo on Yahoo! Sports right now, accompanying an op-ed whose teaser is "Going for bronze without the help of performance-enhancing drugs should be as good as gold for America and its Olympians."
Did this really need to be written?
"I think every single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we'd make."
--John Edwards on 60 Minutes, March 2007 (via Mickey Kaus)
Despite the phrase, do people actually make bar bets? Now that everything can be Googled, I wonder.
Anyway, without looking it up (some context: I'd been reading a "Jeter vs. Reyes" baseball column) THINK QUICK and name the 2006 American League MVP.
Fountains (of Wayne, NJ).
(It would have been funny to see the band acknowledged on the page, but I'll gladly settle for their being wise enough not to launch a dopey trademark infringement suit.)
My subjective impression had been that I was having an off year in fantasy/simulation baseball leagues, yet through Sunday, August 3:
$ 1st of 14
* 1st of 6
2nd of 12
2nd of 10
!# 5th of 10
!# 6th of 12
! 10th of 14
$- entry fee and cash prizes
! - entry fee but no cash prizes
*- "suck league" (the object is for your players to play badly)
# - Scoresheet baseball
So I'm fine except in the "sunk cost" leagues. My previous assertion that it was a down year is sort of irrational given that I should care about the league with a prize fund a good deal more than the leagues where despite having spent money to be there I have no money riding.
Then again maybe it's not that irrational - if I were apathetic to how I did in those leagues then what would be the point of the money outlay?
[Both of the Scoresheet leagues happen to be three-way ties (at 55 wins, 57 losses) but that doesn't affect the analysis much.]
This op-ed is a bit over the top but I agree with the general premise. What took people so long to develop shows like The Deadliest Catch? (Someone had to be smart enough to think of it.)
Coincidentally, a couple weeks ago some guy at Newsweek wrote a blurb excoriating these same shows. I meant to mock that guy to no end, openly questioning his manhood etc., but never got around to it.
This post comparing on-line trolls to Objectivistsinaccurately describes Ayn Rand's position on saving someone from a fire (a couple commenters set Megan straight), though that hypothetical did remind me of a specific scene last night's American Dad! rerun (where Francine's birth dad won't save Stan from a fire, having called someone on his cell phone for advice ("What's my liability?")).
That episode in turn was way better than last night's Family Guy rerun. Both skirted the line of ethnic stereotypes, but at least the American Dad! episode was trying to be good (and generally succeeding).