I didn't do anything other than cite a published work.

You claimed that managers "failboat" at constructing lineups. I said there isn't sufficient evidence for such a claim. I'm NOT making any counter-statement that managers are great at constructing lineups. As such, the entire argument is about whether you have enough evidence. You're now saying that your entire evidence is the claim of some stat guy who works for a team? How is this sufficient evidence for anything? You can find some stat guy working for a major league team saying anything.

Keep in mind what you're arguing and what the other person's arguing, before, so to speak, you try to move the goalposts.

It's not a claim, it's a study, based on math. Have you read it?

You usually are confused, which explains a lot.

Oh sorry. I thought you were talking about manager intuition vs actual statistical analysis.

You claimed that no studies had been done on this which is patently unverifiable and likely to be false considering the depth and breadth of resources available to MLB teams.

Perhaps you'd like to learn about Bayesian updating. DS made a couple threads about this in BFI before.

Don't ever ask anybody to hit to the opposite field. They can't do it.

I asked for proof of this. You provided none. Lefty sluggers don't typically hit opposite field even when faced with a lol shift. This one sliver of anecdotal evidence doesn't support your assertion. Unless you played professional baseball or can support your story, I think a good ol "lol @ u" is in order.

Ok. "Lefty slugger" = every MLB hitter.

Another logic error. I've lost count.

I'm glad guys like Jeter can't hit opposite field, who would want him/his team to succeed?

lolololololololol if anyone's actually followed the evolution of your argument. It vaguely mirrors what you tried to pass off as a card counting spread.

Regardless, this is off topic. I wanna stick to PBWBs.

No, it just provides evidence of your stupidity, logic errors, and poor reading comprehension.

Ever get that EV calc on the 1-4 unit spread, 1 spot? Of course that is NOT 1-4 unit spread, 1 or 2 spots, is it?

Just man up and get your buddies to put up $100k. What a tool.

Hey, I was wondering if anybody who has knowledge of such would provide a rough approximation of the money line for two equal MLB teams, with the left fielder of one team replaced with a 17 year old random JV baseball player. For arguments sake let's assume the team to be 2009 Phillies.

The money line can be for both home/away scenarios. Thank you very much.

lol, nice.

Thread should probably be locked unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. Hasn't had anything to do with the topic for over a week now as far as I can see.

As I'm sure you've noticed, there's an inverse relationship around here between the length of a thread and the amount of substantive discussion. It's part of 2+2's charm imo.

tuq, don't you care about ppt? Internet feuds are good for the stats yo.

It's a claim based on a study based on questionable assumptions. I don't even have to read any particular study to know this, since the information required to build a correct model is neither readily available, nor discernable from available data.


There isn't enough data to conduct such a study. Batters aren't randomly moved around the batting order just so that some stat guy can study the effect. How much data is there on Albert Pujols batting ninth? Or Pujols hitting behind Ichiro? When batters are actually moved, there is a reason, which taints the data. We're talking about what is likely a small, transient effect. It's one of those things that you pretty much have to rely on intuition and expert reasoning at this point. In fact nearly all in-game decisions in any sport are like this - it's just that lineup construction appears deceptively simple, once you make a few assumptions. But you can't tell, with a statistical study, whether any of those assumptions are true.


That is a field where I'm much more of an expert than you or DS. Don't make me quote PhD dissertations on machine learning. A lot of my arguments about epistemological limitations, in fact, come from reasoning within those frameworks.

you know i've never actually read candide, but based on this thread i think i'm going to

if i read it unironically, maybe i could then know why dusty baker bats willy taveras at leadoff.

'epistemological limitations' - all but your own, no doubt. it's either you know something, or it can't be known.

I'm still convinced there's a less obscure synonym for panglossian that they could have used instead.

We were all wondering about whether you were going to read that book. Thanks for the update.


This is, of course, the exact opposite of what I wrote. Again, you keep proving my point that most of you don't care about correctness and will resort to every trick in the sports bar drunk's handbook. Somehow, after many posts that effectively add up to a narrative about how head coaches, business executives, managers etc, are all idiots and you're too smart to be one of them, you're now raising a rhetorical issue out of your perception (you're not addressing anything I really wrote) that I'm arrogant. I'm sure someone somewhere is writing an article about how Belichick had it coming, after all, he's so arrogant and smug, look at all that hubris, he thinks he knows better than us, etc.

Accusation of arrogance is a classic appeal to human emotions used against smart people who aren't wise enough to hide their intelligence. No actual overt arrogance is necessary for this accusation because arrogance is another common human frailty - you can always find signs if you care to look. It's just that arrogance in those we have reason to envy is harder to accept. Thus any demonstration of superior intelligence, without compelling personal narratives that can defuse the envy will generally be met with accusations of arrogance. Since you're the one who brought up the Sklansky quote, I'd like you to think about this again - what best explains Sklansky's perception that the business world is full of idiots? Lack of smart people or smart people also generally tending to be wise enough to hide their intelligence?

Possible. Either way, I don't know how the idea that generally it's impossible for you to correctly judge decisions or competence of experts without being an expert yourself, except when statistical evidence is overwhelming was interpreted as a panglossian worldview.

Why would you expect a head coach to be an expert in every single aspect of the game, in this case game management of fourth down? To become a head coach, you usually have to prove yourself as a position coach, where close to zero game management decisions are made. Then you become a coordinator, where you might have more input on that facet of the game, but in the end the head coach has the final say. Finally you become a head coach, and suddenly it's all on your shoulders. Why should they be experts at this specific task when the vast majority of their competency at lower levels had nothing to do with it? Someone who spent several dozen hours figuring out optimal fourth down decisions may very well be more well versed in making those decisions than a head coach who is more concerned with the other parts of his job.

While this may be true, I think there's also something to be said for caring about methodology in arriving at "correctness." Your method appears to consist largely of stating what you consider to be clear and obvious ideas while making some reasonable points about emotional and cognitive biases of people that prevent them from seeing these shining obvious truths. As I commented a couple hundred posts ago, this type of method makes dialogue very difficult because there's not much to discuss if what is in play is just debating the obviousness of the purported truths. This thread is a good example of that. Your method also does not seem to give us much help in figuring out what to do when experts disagree, which is clearly an important problem in knowledge formation.

I will concede that many people get too attached to superficial applications of an impressive looking method. This is science as religion or cult. I definitely think there are some signs of this in this thread. (If you're using mathematical arguments it must be correct!) However, there are ways of arguing with these people, and within their own framework they can conceivably be shown wrong. Thus I think their stance is in general better, even though much of what you say about people having knee-jerk desires to reject experts is true.

Why do we know Babe Ruth is better than Ty Cobb nao at baseball... wait... we can't know that at all.

HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING?!?!?

it's not. what you are writing is that you are effectively the conduit by which i can know things - either i know it via some expert; i know that via you pointing out which people are the experts.

lol. i am raising the point that you decide what is or is not knowable, and by doing so decide all knowledge. thus i mocked your notion of epistemological limitations.

obviously the latter, and we've been through this a billion times.

just refer to gumpzilla's post for any questions you might have.

Because it's incredibly simple, and all he needs is for one of the about 15 people on his staff to bring it up and they should be able to explain to him why it's correct in less than a minute if he's even reasonably open-minded. It's like saying "why would you expect the President to know how to be the commander-in-chief better than someone who posts on an internet forum, he's going to be either a Congressman or a Governor prior to that and neither one of them controls a military".

What do you mean, it's incredibly simple? If you believe the mathematical models, almost every single head coach makes mistakes every single week. So one of two things is possible, either coaches are making mistakes every week and therefore we shouldn't expect them to get it right since few do, or the model is mistaken and it isn't a simple decision.

Thremp owns Phone Booth but PB wins the Argumentum ad nauseam and Argumentum verbosium awards.

PB reminds me of a former undergrad student.....