Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Apparently your feathers are getting much more ruffled than what was intended, but I put a qualifier on why I said some were unable to appreciate Ankiel’s recent success in order to not question anyone’s intelligence. I never called anybody an idiot, but simply indicated that there is an unhealthy fixation by some such that everytime Ankiel does something well they choose to make some backhanded comment on Rasmus’ playing time instead. Then, I was told that it wasn’t anything personal towards Ankiel, but instead aimed at LaRussa.

That was the reasoning behind the statements. I actually am sorry if you were offended. I simply didn’t see this as an attack on anyone’s intelligence. Instead, I see it as an argument that I feel the negative feelings towards LaRussa about Rasmus are overshadowing the positive feelings that I, and as a fan of the same team assume others as well, have regarding Ankiel’s current revival.

Lugo will sit, but he wouldn’t sit him. And yeah, what you said.

can shoot lasers. Wouldn’t exactly call that fair.

If by “fact” you mean something that can be checked and confirmed or denied, it most certainly is.

for some reason teams for the last week or so have not been feeding rick-dick a steady diet of low outside strikes and just barely off the plate pitches. have no clue why, as he has not shown the ability to discern those pitches well enough to hit them or even foul them off. he is still pulling everything, including that one high outside pitch last night. will be interesting to see if he sees the low and away pattern soon and how he deals with it

The pirates have paid 100s of millions over the past decades to, well, be the pirates.

I’m not stats-savvy but are you saying that predictions are always based on small sample sizes? And therefore are useless?

My response will likely be lengthy so sorry to repeat anything that is said while I’m typing.

First:

you blindly play the same player every day based on his projected production (in this case, a completely statistically projected production as the sample size argument clearly applies), you are certainly going to have to deal with decreased production periods that balance out the increased production periods that create the averages. Depending on that players production cycle, that could be significant.

However, he has managed that way his entire career and has a track record that indicates in general he’s pretty good at.

Because his teams have had great success doesn’t necessarily mean it was because of his mad genius in constructing the starting lineup. Managers play with the hand they are dealt – they win when they have good teams and lose when they have bad teams. There is no good objective way to judge managers that I have seen – world series, winning seasons, all that is crap.

Has Rasmus’ ABs indicated to you that he’s pulling out of his current slump? Is it the weak grounders that make you feel confident in him returning to form? Is it the way Ankiel is scorching the ball, using the whole field, or the way he’s keeping his head down on the ball that indicates this is just a fluke to you?

The point you make here is clearly what we disagree with most. Our point, demonstrated by empirical evidence, is that in no way does 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 bad ABs give any indication of what is going to happen in the next AB. So, in Ankiels case, even if he went 8-8 with 7HRs and a 2B, his next PA is likely to reflect his “true-talent” level, not what he has done lately. Obviously this is different in the case of injury.

In the short term, whatever you know about statistical analysis must be thrown out because it can’t effectively be applied.

First, what? Second, our point is that a player’s season is a series of independent ABs with unique outcomes. Sometimes the distributions of hits is bunched, sometimes they are far between. But just as if you coin 10 times in a row and get 10 heads, the chances of a tails on the next flip are still 50/50.

If I understand your argument correctly, you are suggesting that a manager can correctly time when to play a certain player and consistently get a return above his true talent level. This I cannot agree with.

I’m not suggesting that TLR ignore injuries but guessing as to when a player is going to pull out of a slump is total crystal ball work. People do not have an ability to beat the long term odds by playing short term gambles with these kind of predictors. We’re inclined to remember the times it works (the last 8 games) and forget how terrible a decision it was for the first 100 games.

I’m arguing the abstract or the hypothetical in the next week when Rasmus is healthy.

I don’t think anybody has advocated putting an injured Rasmus in versus a healthy player. This is more a philosophical argument about management practices.

Read the comments.

BURN

Just because someone has more experience at something doesn’t mean that they are infallible and above criticism from an objective outside observer!

George Bush/Obama have infinitely more information and experience at being President. Does that mean that every decision they make is worth our trust? Blindly following an authority figure just because of authority and its access is pleading ignorance.

Just because you happen to agree with somebody that has been in the business for a long time doesn’t mean that you’re working from a higher level of experience or knowledge than mostly everybody here on this blog. LaRussa could have been working under the wrong assumptions all this time, but he gets a freakin’ pass because he’s been coaching forever. Some less-experienced outsider has a potentially better way of looking at something, but he/she deserves no credit/respect because they’re not part of some inner circle.

Maybe Tony is too close to the situation to really see what is best for the team. Something about a forest and some trees.

past elementary school, maybe I should just shut up permanently, no?

Sheesh. I have enough of a brain to know that a young, cost-controlled, five-tool player that even the “experienced” baseball lifers say is going to be a star is the future for this team. I also can see that an injury prone, undisciplined hitter like Ank is the past. Especially since, as you no doubt are hoping the Cardinals will commit $80 million to Matt Holliday and $100+ million to AP, we need to avoid throwing around $5 – $8 million per year on guys like Ankiel when this team will have so many other needs.

Think about the incentives here. TLR’s incentive is to win now, every year. He could retire tomorrow, rich, respected and HOF-bound; what the hell does he care about the team’s prospects in 2-3 years? Us fans don’t have that luxury, we’ve got to live with the present-day decisions that could have bad consequences down the road.

If you want to argue the points for why LaRussa might make this decision, then you have a valid argument. As it is, to just “he’s done it more” is a weak cop-out of an argument. If you’re just going to blindly defer to his judgement, then why do you bother to come here?

It is obvious that this year LaRussa has definitely allowed his decisions to be clouded based on personal feelings about players. It has been proven over his entire career that he has a bias towards players that have succeeded at the ML level over players that might succeed if given the opportunity. There is a very real reason to be skeptical of LaRussa’s decision making process when managing a team that has a significant amount of its roster made up of players with fewer than 3 years of ML experience.

Because you always say them like you know what the hell you’re talking about, but they’re so completely impossible to know that we know you don’t.

Unless you DO have inside information…Hardcore Legend, is that you?

because of my gender construct, dearie.