data.3news-bydate.test.rec.sport.baseball.104653 Maven / Gradle / Ivy
From: [email protected] (Roger Maynard)
Subject: Re: Jack Morris
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON
Lines: 71
In <[email protected]> [email protected] (David DeMers) writes:
>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Roger Maynard) writes:
>The facts are that Morris
>|> has shown us that he has what it takes to play on a WS winning club.
>|> Clemens hasn't.
>What *does* it take to play on a WS winning club?
We have no way of knowing because we cannot separate Morris' contribu-
tion from the rest of the team's. There is only one way of determin-
ing "best" in baseball. And that is by looking at the scoreboard at
the end of the game. Each game determines which *team* is the best
that day. At the end of the season, the team that was the best the
most often is the best in the division. The playoffs determine the
best of the best. But the point is that the only decision making pro-
cess used to determine the "best" is the score of the game and it re-
lates to the *teams*. Not the individual players. There is no method
inherent in baseball of comparing individual performances. And that
is how it should be, because, after all, baseball is a team game.
To say that one player is better than another is to be able to say ab-
solutely that player A's team would have played better with player B
in their lineup. Sheer speculation. Impossible to ascertain.
If you want to select a group of statistics and claim that Clemens has
done better with those statistics as a criteria, then fine. But you
have to be able to prove that those statistics measure the
individual's contribution to winning the WS - because that is the
only measure of "best" that has any meaning in the context of base-
ball. So until you can prove that Clemens contributes to a WS cham-
pionship more than Morris your evaluation of Clemens is totally sub-
jective and is mere opinion. I have yet to see that any of you can
predict a WS winner with any greater accuracy than Jeanne Dixon.
>The fact is that Morris didn't "win" any ballgames, Toronto did, in
>spite of Morris' "contribution". This has been explained to you
Exactly. The Jays won with Morris pitching. And Boston wins with
Clemens pitching. I am not saying that Morris is better than Clemens.
I am saying that individual comparisons between players are totally
meaningless and that anyone claiming that Clemens is better based on
his ERA has missed the point of what baseball is all about.
>many, many times and you are either too stupid or too stubborn to grasp it.
You don't have to be rude.
>You are completely consumed by the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
For you to say that means that you have either missed the entire point
of my argument, or you yourself have committed a fallacy - Ignoratio
Elenchi. I am not saying that Morris is better than Clemens because
he has more rings (although I have, tongue in cheek, claimed
that in the past). I am saying that it is impossible to isolate an
individual's performance from that of his team's for the purpose of
comparing that individual's performance with another individual's per-
formance.
The stats are a nice hobby and that's about it. There is no new
knowledge being produced. So when a poster claims that Morris is better
than Clemens because he has more rings, the poster is no more nor less
incorrect than the rest of you baying hounds.
--
cordially, as always, [email protected]
"So many morons...
rm ...and so little time."