OT: So... Shohei Ohtani is good at baseball after all
Hit his 3rd homer in his 3rd straight game tonight.
Pitches Sunday against the As.
If this kid wins 15 games with an ERA around 3 and bats .280 hitting 20 HRs, is that MVP worthy?
Kid is making those spring training haters eat their words and well, is really exciting to watch!
This is reductio ad absurdum. The stats guys will argue until the end of time about which player is better at this, or that, or overall based on increasingly esoteric metrics that 99.9% DGAF about. But the origin of stat mania was moneyball and they, in fact, tried to earn as many team wins as possible, and did a pretty good job of succeeding.
I guess every little leaguer might know that, but it's missing the point. (and you can make a similar claim about innovation in any field of thought...of course the chinese figured out how to make gunpowder, you just have to mix this and that. Of course geometry makes sense, Pythagoras was just codifying the obvious)
The A's were using that inefficiency to generate team wins, a notion you dismissed as passe in the mind of the Billy Beans of the world. All stats, be it OBP v BA, wins vs OPS-against, or any other stat or comparison between stats you want to use is about identifying those inefficiencies in an effort to win more games.
This is not what WAR is, means, or how it's calculated or applied.
You and I agree. I had an itchy trigger finger on the response above due to the generally ridiculous perspective of stats vis a vis wins that was being pushed.
What do you think teams are paying their stat folks to do, exactly? Write academic papers on some derivative of WAR?
Stat guys MAY argue that a team with a lesser record is statistically "better" than a team with more wins, but statistical betterness does't win divisions. And no GM on earth is searching for the hollow victory of superiority in advanced stats.
When he starts and wins three complete games of a World Series with a dinger during one of those starts, give me a call.
That may be a bit of a high bar
Not high enough for a HoF induction.
I love this.
100% yes
Go with A the commie.
Surprised I never heard of him.
The Bambin-Oh.
Ugh--no.
He looked very bad in Spring Training, so bad that some scouts were saying he is not major league ready as a hitter. So we shall see how he does after teams get some tendencies, I hope he can adjust because I am definitely rooting for the guy. It's such a cool story, but way too early for potential MVP talk.
mic drop.
Except Pujols sucks now. And I'd say Ohtani is the talk of baseball, not the Angels
Shohei the Money
My mind on Ohtani and Ohtani on my mind
But will he score any touchdowns?