Mid-Month Miscellany (Bill)
It's been four weeks since I've written here, and over three weeks since anyone has written here. You'd think I'd have more to say.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 10:30, I'm in "Constitutional History I: Articles of Confederation to the Civil War" with Professor John Harrison. I love it for many reasons. For one, he opens every class with a monologue that's more like a stand-up routine than a lecture; it's generally completely unrelated to constitutional history, though he finds a way to tie it in somehow (usually very tenuously).
This morning, his topic was the NL MVP vote. He fully approved of the selection of Albert Pujols, noting correctly that with Barry Bonds out for most of the season, Pujols was clearly the best player in the league. He then said (approximately) the following:In this class, we could be said to be living in the nineteenth century, because we're doing history, and that's the period we're primarily concerned with. The Associated Press baseball writers, however, are not doing history, they're doing baseball, and they could also be said to be living in the nineteenth century, because they continue to be focused on statistics like RBI when analyzing things like who the MVP is, and RBI is probably the most arbitrary statistic in sports. Which is intuitively obvious, really, because to get an RBI, you need to have other people get on base. And yet you see almost no mention of things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage, which really do tell you how valuable a player is.
He even went on to mention OPS and a few other metrics, briefly. Earlier in the semester he quoted Bill James and even mentioned sabermetrics, for an obscure reason I've since forgotten. I just can't tell you how happy this makes me.
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On the subject of the MVP award, the voters actually got the awards mostly right this year, with three exceptions (only one noteable). The selection of Bartolo Colon for the Cy Young Award was a joke, though a predictable one; if Professor Harrison thinks that RBIs are arbitrary (which, of course, they are), I'd like to hear what he thinks about the five extra "wins" Colon had over Johan Santana. Colon wasn't among the ten best pitchers in the AL this year, let alone the best one. But that's about it; while I wouldn't have voted for Ryan Howard as NL Rookie of the Year, that's a perfectly respectable choice (though I am a little shocked that Duke didn't make it in the top three). And I don't think Ozzie Guillen is a good manager in any sense, but managing is an unqualifiable and probably ultimately unimportant thing anyway; I've always thought that a good manager is just one that stays out of the way and doesn't screw things up too much (which Ozzie isn't particularly good at).
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A final baseball note: these are dark days for the enlightened baseball fan, or at least the darkest they've been in five years or so. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein is gone, and the names that came up for his replacement were all Traditional Baseball Guy-type names. Paul DePodesta, Billy Beane's number-two computer geek of Moneyball fame, got the goodbye-and-good-riddance from the Dodgers. And the White Sox, widely (and wrongly) perceived as a team that relies on defense and small ball, won the World Series.
I'm not sure I see any counterbalancing signs, either. The voters got it generally right, but for the wrong reasons; Chris Carpenter won the NL Cy Young over Clemens not just because he pitched more innings, and certainly not because hsi DIPS numbers show that he was the better pitcher, but chiefly because he had many more wins. Pujols won the MVP over Andruw Jones not because of his higher OBP or SLG, but because of his higher batting average. I think what we're seeing is a kind of backlash. It took a while for people to even become aware of these weird new ideas. Once they did, two or three years ago, they seemed to realize that these ideas work, and people were slowly coming around; now traditionalism rears its ugly head again and people find reasons to claim that these ideas don't work. Just part of the transition process, I think. I hope.
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In personal news, I was trying for some time to organize a "split" arrangement with the firm in Chicago and the one in Minneapolis, so that I could spend the first 8 weeks of the summer in Chicago and the next 7 in Minneapolis. But now it looks like that might not work with the Chicago firm's schedule, so I'm leaning toward just spending the whole summer in Minneapolis...which, now that I think about it, is probably what I really want anyway.
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It was my wife's birthday last Thursday. Everything about her is fabulous.
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I still really like My Name is Earl and The Office, although the latter makes me squirm a whole lot. Kristine has also gotten me into a show on the Discovery Channel called Mythbusters, which is really, really intereseting (and not just because of Kari, the adorable redhead who can build stuff). I'm almost through season three of Gilmore Girls: seasons 4 and 5 are on my Amazon wish list already, so now I feel I have to wait until after Christmas to get them. I don't know how I'll cope.
'Tis all. I'll try to write more than once a month, but no promises.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 10:30, I'm in "Constitutional History I: Articles of Confederation to the Civil War" with Professor John Harrison. I love it for many reasons. For one, he opens every class with a monologue that's more like a stand-up routine than a lecture; it's generally completely unrelated to constitutional history, though he finds a way to tie it in somehow (usually very tenuously).
This morning, his topic was the NL MVP vote. He fully approved of the selection of Albert Pujols, noting correctly that with Barry Bonds out for most of the season, Pujols was clearly the best player in the league. He then said (approximately) the following:In this class, we could be said to be living in the nineteenth century, because we're doing history, and that's the period we're primarily concerned with. The Associated Press baseball writers, however, are not doing history, they're doing baseball, and they could also be said to be living in the nineteenth century, because they continue to be focused on statistics like RBI when analyzing things like who the MVP is, and RBI is probably the most arbitrary statistic in sports. Which is intuitively obvious, really, because to get an RBI, you need to have other people get on base. And yet you see almost no mention of things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage, which really do tell you how valuable a player is.
He even went on to mention OPS and a few other metrics, briefly. Earlier in the semester he quoted Bill James and even mentioned sabermetrics, for an obscure reason I've since forgotten. I just can't tell you how happy this makes me.
-------------------------------------------------------
On the subject of the MVP award, the voters actually got the awards mostly right this year, with three exceptions (only one noteable). The selection of Bartolo Colon for the Cy Young Award was a joke, though a predictable one; if Professor Harrison thinks that RBIs are arbitrary (which, of course, they are), I'd like to hear what he thinks about the five extra "wins" Colon had over Johan Santana. Colon wasn't among the ten best pitchers in the AL this year, let alone the best one. But that's about it; while I wouldn't have voted for Ryan Howard as NL Rookie of the Year, that's a perfectly respectable choice (though I am a little shocked that Duke didn't make it in the top three). And I don't think Ozzie Guillen is a good manager in any sense, but managing is an unqualifiable and probably ultimately unimportant thing anyway; I've always thought that a good manager is just one that stays out of the way and doesn't screw things up too much (which Ozzie isn't particularly good at).
--------------------------------------------------------
A final baseball note: these are dark days for the enlightened baseball fan, or at least the darkest they've been in five years or so. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein is gone, and the names that came up for his replacement were all Traditional Baseball Guy-type names. Paul DePodesta, Billy Beane's number-two computer geek of Moneyball fame, got the goodbye-and-good-riddance from the Dodgers. And the White Sox, widely (and wrongly) perceived as a team that relies on defense and small ball, won the World Series.
I'm not sure I see any counterbalancing signs, either. The voters got it generally right, but for the wrong reasons; Chris Carpenter won the NL Cy Young over Clemens not just because he pitched more innings, and certainly not because hsi DIPS numbers show that he was the better pitcher, but chiefly because he had many more wins. Pujols won the MVP over Andruw Jones not because of his higher OBP or SLG, but because of his higher batting average. I think what we're seeing is a kind of backlash. It took a while for people to even become aware of these weird new ideas. Once they did, two or three years ago, they seemed to realize that these ideas work, and people were slowly coming around; now traditionalism rears its ugly head again and people find reasons to claim that these ideas don't work. Just part of the transition process, I think. I hope.
------------------------------------------------------
In personal news, I was trying for some time to organize a "split" arrangement with the firm in Chicago and the one in Minneapolis, so that I could spend the first 8 weeks of the summer in Chicago and the next 7 in Minneapolis. But now it looks like that might not work with the Chicago firm's schedule, so I'm leaning toward just spending the whole summer in Minneapolis...which, now that I think about it, is probably what I really want anyway.
-------------------------------------------------------
It was my wife's birthday last Thursday. Everything about her is fabulous.
-------------------------------------------------------
I still really like My Name is Earl and The Office, although the latter makes me squirm a whole lot. Kristine has also gotten me into a show on the Discovery Channel called Mythbusters, which is really, really intereseting (and not just because of Kari, the adorable redhead who can build stuff). I'm almost through season three of Gilmore Girls: seasons 4 and 5 are on my Amazon wish list already, so now I feel I have to wait until after Christmas to get them. I don't know how I'll cope.
'Tis all. I'll try to write more than once a month, but no promises.