Thurston Fluff

What if he's been juicing since college and just this one time he forgot to take his epitestosterone, leading to elevated T/E levels. That's probably unlikely, but I'm playing devil's advocate here. For the sake of argument lets assume he was cheating all along. We would have to believe he somehow managed to take a masking agent that can't be detected every time he was subjected to random testing. Keep in mind these are random and unannounced. The only time players know they will be tested is when they reach the playoffs. That means the one time he knew a test was coming was the one time he forgot to take a masking agent. That borders on ridiculous. Also he was cleared. That in and of itself is unheard of until now. He was guilty until proven innocent which put the burden of proof on him that he wasn't cheating or didn't make mistake in what he out into his body. For myself when an independent arbiter hears all the evidence and decides he was not guilty then it's enough for me to assume he was.

I haven't commented in this since it happened. I felt it was only fair to let a supposed confidential process be confidential. I just got done reading Braun's comments. The thing that stuck out to me is how well documented his lack of increase in strength speed or size was. People who roid up do not stay the same size. The whole point is to get bigger, stronger and faster. That alone was enough for me to believe he wasn't knowingly cheating. I thought perhaps he could have taken a tainted supplement which would have made him stupid but not a cheater. Now I don't even think that. I do think some questions to be answered by MLB about the process. At the bare minimum by the person or person's who handled Braun's sample.

It is well within the Angels rights to do as they see fit to get their investment in him back. If he wanted to stipulate things like that he should have made that known before the contract not after. While I think it admirable for Pujols to show such respect he should remember who Musial played for. Or more to the point who he didn't play for. Why should the Angels change their marketing plans to show respect for an Cardinal legend?

It's hard to figure out the value of rookies and defense in the best of circumstances let alone in comparison to someone with a very different skill set. Prince and Gamel are very different players as are Yuni and Gonzalez. While one may be better overall I don't even know how to begin to compare the two styles of player to get to a degree of difference needed to interpret worst off season. Then trying to judge a slight upgrade in one area making up for a downgrade in another adds another layer of uncertainty. I think it's more about baseball being around the corner and media outlets needing something to hype when everything has already been said than any great insight.

Today I had to be a gorilla at 6 in the morning. I got to the house and all the lights were off and no sign of life. Double checked and had the right address. Knocked on the door and it was the right house. Fun was has by all. Then I thought what if it was the wrong house? Can you imagine getting woke up to a gorilla with balloons at your door asking for Dave? You gotta wake up later and wonder if that really happened.

I will always view him as a Brewer......hope he does great in the AL. I have nothing against him but he chose to leave so I choose not to care about how well he does any more. It doesn't mean I hope he sucks. It just means I don't give a rat's behind if he does or not.

Though I knew it was coming and thought it was not wise to resign him it still saddened me when I heard he officially signed with another team. Another thing I wonder about is why does anyone say they are surprised by where players go anymore? Since the A-Rod to Texas deal there have been more surprise destinations than not. I also question whether GM's around the league are ever as surprised about where a player lands as they say they are.

It's definitely imprecise over one season. It's not necessarily inaccurate, however. That is a very important distinction: Fair point. I'll try not to use them interchangeably anymore. As far as the precision goes I'm still not convinced using three years of UZR does anything but make the single season measurement better even if it isn't all compiled in that season. Take MacGehee for example. His UZR and UZR/150 last season was 6.5 and 7.3. Does that sound more indicative of his defense last season than his career line of -4.9 and -2.1?

Because it seems like a lot of the discussion so far here about WAR, & specifically its use of UZR, really is calling for a defensive stat that depicts true talent. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the general sense I'm getting. And I think if that's the kind of stat that people are after, I'm not sure it can be found. If it can't be found then it WAR can't be accurate. If WAR can't be accurate why keep viewing it as telling us something useful? In other words WAR is useless.

As bad as Will Ferrell may have been in "Land of the Lost", I'm sure the movie sold a lot more tickets with him in it that it would have with say Jim Belushi or someone like that. Also, I didn't see the movie, but was it really Ferrell that was bad, or the writing, directing, plot, co-stars, and other things that were out of Ferrell's control? Dude got nominated for a Razzie as worst actor for that movie. I doubt anyone could have done worse than he did. I also made less money than it cost to make. If that was his only bad movie lately then maybe we could say it was other people's fault. He was rated most overpaid actor two years running by Forbes. You don't become that from one movie. He was good in the Other Guys but his high water mark was Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. since then he was getting paid on reputation more than current ability. Bringing that back to baseball same goes with players. They are paid based off the belief that some of what they are capable of doing in the future is based off what they have done in the past. Obliviously age plays a part in that but Parra isn't old.

You'd prerhaps want to regress UZR but you can't use multiple years if you want to tell you how that player did in a particular year. That's fine but using something that is known to be inaccurate isn't gonna tell you something accurate. If we accept that then why should we accept that it actually tells you how someone did in a particular year? I think you can use three years of UZR and still be at least a little more indicative of the particular season than the way it is done now. I guess it depends on how much variance one thinks a player has defensively from one season to the next. I tend to think defense varies less than offense so I don't really have a problem with using three years. It won't be entirely indicative of that season but the question isn't whether it is accurate or not but how much closer to accurate it is. If we want it to be all about a single season then we have to go back to the drawing board and find a way to measure defense in a single season. If we can't then WAR should be scrapped altogether. Good idea but if it's not workable in the real world then why keep using it? I'm really not trying to be a wienie about this. It's more that using advanced metrics is very useful but only when it starts with good information. When we don't it leads to less understanding not more. Bad information is worse than none at all. Really, though, Fangraphs breaks up the WAR components. Weight them as you see fit. What's the proper weight for inaccurate information? There is nothing we know of that makes UZR in that amount accurate. Any amount of inaccuracy is bound to make a measure less accurate. The only thing we can do with it is reduce the bad effect but if we use single season defensive metrics we are going to have to use inaccurate information which does nothing but distort the reading.

We didnt have a lefty in the bullpen last semester and it hurt us. There is little doubt the graduation hurt us so we have to pay for Manny to take a few more classes to remain eligible this semester.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif Sorry carry on.

If you think that defense is improperly weighted, that's a different story as well. That's what I was saying all along. I think we have been talking past each other. They use one year of UZR (defense) to one year of offense (lets call it calc1). To get an accurate reading you have to properly weigh defense to match offense. That means you have to use three years of defense to one of offense in each single calculation to get accurate results (lets call that calc2). If you take three years of calc1 and average them you get one number. If you take three years of calc2 and average them you do not get the same number as you would in calc1. If the two stats don't average out the same in the same amount of time then one is not the same as the other.

I can't think of another profession outside of professional sports where you can under perform for 3 or 4 years. Will Ferrell reportedly made over $15 million for Land of the Lost. If you don't think that qualifies as overpayment then you haven't seen the movie.

I guess I am not explaining myself very well. Problem is I don't know how else to do it. Both offense and defense are based on runs but one is roughly three times more accurate than the other in each single WAR. When you use one measure at three times the accuracy rate of the other and count them as equal you then get a totally separate number than if you used each component at equivalent accuracy rates. To use three years of WAR calculated with equally weighted stats even though they are not equally accurate and think you get the same result as if you used one year of properly weighted stats is not accurate. Lets put it this way. If you calculate WAR using the methods of today and you get three years of WAR like 2,3,2 it would not be the same as using three years of UZR for every year of offensive stats in any single year of WAR. If you have different single year WAR's from each way of calculating it you don't suddenly get the WAR of a properly weighted WAR by adding three years of the faulty weighed calculation. Unless each calculation uses the same numbers each will have a different outcome. My argument is you cannot assume three years of a different method of calculations will be the same just because you now have a combined accuracy equivalent of one stat since that combined stat is not in each year of calculation. What you posted form fangraphs tells us how they did it but fails to tell us why using the stats they did in the measure they did was proper. It certainly doesn't tell us that three years of it balances out it's poor use of unequal accuracy levels in equal measure.

Just because you combined several individually inaccurate years doesn't mean the result is flawed as well. I understand what you mean but it isn't accurate because you change the value of UZR when you incorporate it into another stat then use the- multiply by three for accuracy formula for UZR- with that new stat. That new value is derived from combining stats in the wrong amounts to begin with so it isn't going to represent the value of the original UZR stat simply by combining three years of WAR. It will instead give you some sort of hybrid number that was derived by that entire calculation. To expect something that has been changed prior to being multiplied to get you the same value of the original stat prior to combining it to others is just not correct mathematically.

No, this is not what they are doing with WAR if you look at 3 years of data. You're not taking the same bad measurement and multiplying it by three. You're taking 3 individual measurements, and coming up with a sum total of them over 3 years. To use your recipe comparison: If you need a gallon of milk and 3 pounds of chocolate to make cookies, it really doesn't matter what ratios you mix them in initially as long as they are all combined in the end. Each individual WAR estimate is inaccurate because each single one has a bad metric in it. If we combine three bad readings we don't get one better one. We get a combination of three bad ones. Each individual year is off due to the UZR metric being used. You can't then just combine them and expect it to be more accurate than it's components. If you need a gallon of milk and 3 pounds of chocolate to make cookies, it really doesn't matter what ratios you mix them in initially as long as they are all combined in the end. Except you don't get the right ratio simply by combing the three. You get the same bad ratio as you started with. In your example you don't get one gallon of milk to three pounds of chocolate. You combined three recipes all of which had the wrong ratio of milk to chocolate. If the recipe called for one 3-1 ratio of milk to chocolate and you combine three recipes with a ratio of 1-1 you don't get a 3-1 ratio. I am sure there will be more and hopefully they will continue to improve the methodology. When they do I will take more stock in it's results. I am not against the goals nor the process. I am against the belief that it is of much use as it is now. What I don't understand with it is there is a fairly simple fix. Just use three years of UZR to one season of offensive metrics. While not perfect it at least uses apples to apples in it's calculations. The other option would be to weigh UZR less so at least the bad metric isn't as heavily influential in the result. Maybe the best way would be to separate offense and defense and come up with two WAR's. Then you could combine them in one overall number without the inaccuracies. In summary, WAR probably represents the best framework available for estimating the value of performance that is publicly available This would be were I disagree. We do have much more information available to us as we speak. Just not all in one number. IF that one number is off then it makes no sense to say well it's the best single number we have so lets just accept it until there is a better one. If it's methodology is off, and we all seem to accept it is because of the way they use defensive metrics, then it's entire result cannot be accurate. I think using a framework that is known to be based off bad information is worse than using none at all. At least we won't be using it as something it isn't, which is to say anywhere near accurate. AS it stands it isn't even on the right path to accuracy so why keep going down that road?

It always amazes me how few people know who Mort Sahl is. Especially when compared to Lenny Bruce. Yet he was one of the greatest comedians in American history. He was the first to record a live album and work college campuses. An avenue George Carlin used when he was being censured in traditional comedy clubs. He ushered in the narrative style of comedy that worked so well for guys like Bob Newhart. I once saw a routine of his where he read a newspaper and made comments based off that one paper. It was both insightful and hilarious. He was as controversial as Lenny Bruce but, unlike Lenny, never forgot to be funny. Maybe if he would have died tragically he would have more notoriety now than he does.

If the number is inaccurate when the sample size is small, it would stand to reason that if the sample size were larger the number would become more accurate. They use the same single season sample size three years in a row not three years of UZR for one year of offensive stats. Big difference. It's like not using enough hops in making beer. If you make three batches of beer with too few hops in each batch you cannot combine all three batches of beer together and get the right amount of hops to make it taste right. Same thing with WAR. Combining them together doesn't make one good one. It's the same inaccurate ratio multiplied by three.

It seems like a lot of times people look at WAR over a multi-year span though when trying to decide if one player is better than another. I don't really have a problem with this method as a starting point. Why would four years of a stat that uses an inaccurate number in it's calculation be better than one year of a stat that uses an inaccurate number in it's calculation? Until they fix the defensive metric to match the level of offensive accuracy it's useless. Useless as in tells you nothing more than gut feelings or seeing those players twice in their careers does. Just because it's a stat that you can calculate does not mean it's better than nothing. When those calculations are based on inaccurate numbers to begin with it is impossible to come up with something demonstrably better than nothing.

WAR is about giving results not showing how good a player is How many times on this site have we seen it used to show how good player is? It seems like the most used stat to show someone is better than someone else.

So would something with a weighted average of the past three seasons' UZR or UZR/150 make more sense? Maybe valuing players in that way in general makes sense, not just defensively. While that may make it better I don't think it solves all of WAR's issues. WAR is a valiant attempt to get an all encompassing simple number to evaluate a player's ability. I simply don't believe you can boil so many factors down into one accurate simple number. I'm fine with using WAR as a beginning point if they would eliminate, or least change, how they measure defense in WAR but I still think it is not the definitive end all, tell all stat that it sometimes gets used as. Setting aside the defensive issues perhaps my objection with WAR is less the stat itself than how it gets used. As it stands I don't even think it helps much as a starting point. You just can't use an inaccurate metric and expect an accurate result. As the saying goes garbage in garbage out.

UZR is the worst. I really, really like the wOBA side of it, really good for comparing offensive production. Just think about this: last year Casey McGehee would have been a negative WAR player but his fielding was judged so good by UZR that he was supposedly a positive one. That is because they use UZR in a way that is not accurate. It is commonly accepted that defensive metrics need 3ish years to be as accurate as one year of offensive metrics. Then they use one year's worth of defensive metrics and count it like it is as accurate as one year's worth of offensive metrics.

The southern hemisphere would disagree with your argument. Of course, if you simply flip your globe/atlas/map/laptop upside-down, you'll be all set! In other words we are speaking as if we lived in the southern hemisphere. It's kind of like group dyslexia or something.

It seem to me the terms "up north" and "down south" should be reversed. After all heat rises and it's warmer in the south. ----- Continued from: viewtopic.php?p=759831#p759831 Original Lead: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=8540