Sorry, no, actually, not the last thing
Dave said his would be the last post… but it’s not. Responding to this, specifically, from Baker’s post:
I’ve since been alerted to the fact that the U.S.S. Mariner blog is taking issue with me writing down what Silva said last night. They say he had a less effective sinker because that’s what the vertical drop charts show. And also, they point out that he had more flyouts last night than ground outs. They suggest I listened to Silva and wrote what he said because I’m afraid of losing clubhouse access. Yes, that’s right. I’m afraid of not having access to players that have been almost universally criticized in this space and by me on the radio at various times all year.
The money quote here:
They suggest I listened to Silva and wrote what he said because I’m afraid of losing clubhouse access.
This is absolutely not true.
It’s not there. Read Dave’s post. Tell me where in that post Dave accuses Baker of writing what Silva said because he’s afraid of losing clubhouse access?
It doesn’t. Dave’s point is that he wishes Baker would stop just repeating what players say when it’s clearly incorrect or of no value.
If you want to argue that there are comments that speculate on clubhouse access being a reason why reporters don’t openly contradict players and coaches on points like this, that’s entirely true.
But Baker’s post substantially misrepresents what Dave said in order to make it easily-dismissible. It’s a strawman attack, and it’s disappointing.
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Baker has been entirely too defensive. His writing is usually quite solid and he seems to understand what the fans think, but I would expect a Media professional to have more ability to withstand some constructive criticism. I didn’t see Dave’s comments as a personal attack on Baker, but rather an opportunity to provide even more insight to the fans by evaluating Silva’s comments from a statistical perspective.
I’m sorry, that was me: I said he was afraid of losing clubhouse access. I believe it, too. I think Baker believes he has an obligation to take what players tell him at face value. For instance, in this case, he seems unable to think of any other options besides “Silva’s right, the change did lead to a better sinker” or “Silva’s deliberately lying to me”. When of course there are many others, including “Silva doesn’t really understand what he does”.
Actually, Geoff’s entire counter argument is based upon the strawman…..USSM authors don’t understand what command is…. USSM authors can’t evaluate player performance because they are blinded by prejudices….
It’s really a jump the shark moment………
And you know, if he wanted to say “in the comments” or “readers” or whatever — but this is conflating the comments with Dave’s post so that Dave’s post can be dismissed as crazy, which it clearly is not.
And I think it’s entirely clear, reading that paragraph, that that’s what’s going on there — it goes from there’s this criticism (in the post) and these other assertions (also in the post), and this accusation (which is not at all in the post), which is nutty, so don’t think too hard about it.
This really shouldn’t be a battle between beat writers and the blogosphere in Seattle….
I’m suggesting that the dialog has reached a point to where simply ignoring the beat writers actually raises the level of baseball discussion….
I think the point is.. lets write about baseball instead of writing about people writing about baseball.
Maybe someone should set up a blog to blog about people who blog about baseball?
Here’s the thing, Geoff; you’re not just “writing down what Silva said”. You’re presenting it as if it is a fact that we should believe, too.
If all you’d said was “Silva told me he did a little dance and sprinkled some fairy dust on his arm, and claimed that was why he got better results tonight”; no one would have a problem with that.
Here’s what you said, instead:
“So, when Silva tells us, as he did last night, that he felt more comfortable with his sinker by about the fifth inning, I believe him. Why lie about something like that? In fact, if you check the game data from last night, he recorded 12 outs in innings five through eight. Five of those outs came on ground balls. Three on strikeouts. Two on infield popouts. Two came on flyballs. Don’t know about you, but that tells me his sinker was fairly effective. Any of you who watched last night’s game probably saw that. I won’t pretend that these stats mean everything, because we won’t know how successful Silva’s adjustment will be until he uses it more often. But in my book, it’s reason enough to assume that he knows a little bit about what he’s saying.”
You’re trying to prove that what Silva said is right, and that’s crossing the line from reporting to analysis. If you post (in this case, bad) analysis on your blog, people are going to read it and comment on it; if you want people to say nicer things about your attempts at analysis, get better at it.
I understand you guys like Baker, and I can see why with some of his writing, but he sets up strawman attacks like this quite often and it drives me crazy.
It might have to do with internet communication, but I find when someone uses a lot of logical, well stated reasons to disagree with someone on the internet, that it is always followed by someone else misquoting them to dismiss what they have said. I have spent my share of time in political or theological forms before, it’s a nightmare.
The sad thing is, I know Baker is smarter then that.
Thanks for highlighting this, it was the thing that disappointed me the most about Baker’s post by far. It’s as misleading as attributing to Baker whatever his commenters are saying (something I trust the authors won’t do).
DMZ wrote:
“Tell me where in that post Dave accuses Baker of writing what Silva said because he’s afraid of losing clubhouse access?”
That would be the title of the post – “When Access is Detrimental to Truth.”
I’m not aligning myself with Baker in this spat (nor necessarily with Dave), but to be fair, the title of the post does imply exactly what Baker says.
Jeff, you should post that on his blog.
He’s getting offended and letting emotion get in the way of logic…it’s like two kids on the playground now…just ignore him and it will hopefully go away…
You’ve already backed up your position with evidence rather than speculation or emotion…
Nah; for all the guff we give him sometimes, Baker’s got a pretty thankless job dealing with the commenters he has already, and trying to blog about a team that’s painful to watch on a daily basis.
I have a suspicion he reads comments here, anyway.
And really, despite how he presents it, nobody here wants a “fight” with Baker; we just want to see him return to the form we saw early on and get away from feeling like he has to be so defensive all the time.
If he wants to get into analysis, great; we’d all love to see solid baseball analysis make its way into regular sports reporting. But right now, Geoff just isn’t very good at that part of things, and if he wants to improve, he needs to be willing to take feedback more constructively than he has to this point.
What I’d love to see happen is a more positively focused dialogue, something like this:
Geoff: “Hey, I think I found something in Silva’s batted ball data that makes me think that he really knows what he’s talking about when he says his sinker is working better after some mechanical change. Here’s the data I found.”
USSM or whoever: “No, that doesn’t tell you anything useful; here’s some different data that shows that it really is just a fluke and doesn’t represent any skill change.”
Geoff: “Got it; I took him at his word but thought it merited looking into further.”
Something like that, where beat writers can help funnel in real analytical material into the mind of the average fan, would be SERIOUSLY AWESOME because they can inherently reach so much larger of an audience; but right now, Geoff is presenting all of his stuff as if his job inherently makes his stuff more right than “some darn bloggers”, and that’s entirely the wrong approach for him to take if he really wants to raise the discourse about the Mariners.
Pete:
No it doesn’t. I can see where you can read it that way, but the point, explained in the article, is that in having access to Silva and what Silva’s saying actually reduces the effectiveness of the reporting, because what Silva’s selling is not true.
A title that would have stated that would have been “Trading truth for access” or something like that.
I would call that a serious misreading of the title, though it appears Geoff shares it, since he’s updated his post to highlight that. The point of access being detrimental here is simply that he’s too close to see the forest, not that he’s worried they’ll put a fence around the tree he’s looking at. Meanwhile, he’s looking at irregularities in the bark and using them to determine how tall the tree is.
I think it would be only fair to write an article that accuses Baker of saying everything that people said in his comment section. Boy, would that make him ten kinds of vile.
“Oh noes! Baker hates women/homosexuals/black people/math/and the Japanese!1!”
Pete – The title suggests that getting that information hurts the truth, not protecting it. Two entirely different things. In other words… don’t believe Silva.
Can’t we all just get along?
In Geoff’s defense, his interpretation of the post title is a pretty natural interpretation to derive.
God almighty. We’re now caught up in a whirlwind of blog drama over semantics? This is childish.
Can’t we all just go back to playing armchair GM and get along?
I don’t know that arguing about what interepretations are valid or common is going to be particularly productive….
I realize that you could make the same argument about my original post, but annnyyywaayyyyy
I’m a little late to this party, but I just wrote up a little review of Silva’s 2008 sinker:
http://osemetrics.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/carlos-silva-the-sinkerballer/
The important part is probably the graph of his last 14 games I have vertical break data for:
http://osemetrics.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/silva_sink_20081.png
Now we’re caught up in accusing each other of blog drama? This is meta-childish. Can’t we get back to accusing each other of petty sniping?
You’d think Baker, of all people, would be careful to draw a distinction between blog posts and comments made underneath it.
That seems right. He’s been pretty thin-skinned, and I’m not sure that’s a good attribute for a journalist.
But now I’ll support Baker a little:
If you change this to “Baker believes he has an obligation to report what players tell him at face value” then I’m 100% on-board. I don’t think Baker needs to, or likely even has time to, refute, support, or otherwise comment on what the player’s say. He could provide a reasonably useful purpose by simply relating what they’re saying, perhaps followed by some variation of “that’s what Silva says” that readers should interpret and neither endorsing nor opposing it.
If he stuck with that, it would be great. But he does seem to take the player’s sides (or at least certain player’s sides) and make the case for them on occasion. He mixes reporting and commentary, which is a bad thing. Don’t they teach that in J-school?
I really don’t think you’re going to change Baker’s mind and I know for certain that Baker isn’t going to change yours (thank goodness). So, with that in mind, it might just be best to ignore Baker’s unfounded ramblings. Those who wish to worship at the altar of statistical analysis will always know where they can go to do that.
It’s also not just Dave, but BOTH of the big two M’s hobbyist blogs, coming up with exactly the same criticism of Baker’s original post, which suggests that maybe it’s worth paying attention to.
For the record, I don’t believe that access corrupts that obviously — “if I don’t say nice things, they won’t talk to me again”. I think it’s more subtle than that. These are people you work with every day — you’re not going to rip them, and even if you do, you’re going to do it as gently and obliquely as possible. “Vidro’s struggling a little” is about as far as you’re going to go, and as we’ve seen countless times with Bloomquist, you make little excuses and try to find the good — “well, it was grounded right to second, but it, uh, took a lot of hops” sort of thing.
I don’t think that’s a failing, really. It IS, however, bad analysis — and bad analysis is worse than incorrect analysis. Like Dave says, good processes are ultimately more important than good results.
Derek, and John:
Fair enough. I got the point of the post. Still, I don’t think the title of the post did a good job of reflecting its point, and I can see how Baker would interpret it the way he did.
I don’t even care, personally, if he believes what the players tell him.
But if nothing else, Silva obviously has an enormous incentive not to say “heck, man, I just got lucky against a bad team; I’ll probably suck again next time out”.
So ANYBODY, much less a journalist, should be skeptical about taking his assertion that he made some mysterious mechanical change that suddenly made him unsuck at face value.
That’s how mainstream journalism works. The currency is the quote, not the fact. “The White House denied today that there were any large green men camped across the street” becomes the lede instead of “There were large green men camped across the street from the White House, a fact the White House denied despite the visual evidence.”
“Fair enough. I got the point of the post. Still, I don’t think the title of the post did a good job of reflecting its point, and I can see how Baker would interpret it the way he did.”
But if he actually read the post rather than dwell on the title this wouldn’t have happened.
That’s like me taking Geoff to task for his headline guy coming up with a misleading headline.
I think we can all agree that this team blows goats even if we disagree on the how and why. In the end we all want a better team to talk about.
That’s not what he’s doing, though. To extend your example, here’s the current scenario:
Geoff: “Large green men camped across the street from the White House today. Look, I have pictures.”
Us: “Geoff, you made those in Photoshop, and it looks like all you did is cut and paste alien heads onto shots of Lou Ferrigno’s body from the Hulk TV show and slapped them over a backdrop of the White House lawn. They don’t prove anything.”
Geoff: “But I have special access that you don’t; someone in the White House told me these pictures are EXACTLY what they saw too!”
Us: *heavy sigh*
This Baker/USS Mariner stuff has become pointlessly petty and stupid. (it reminds me of this http://xkcd.com/386/)
Baker can be off the mark, but I take what he says with a grain of salt (as I think most people do), and consider the things he puts out there. There’s value in what he puts out there. It’s interesting to note that Carlos Silva has this viewpoint about himself.
And it’s not like I agree with 100% of what you say (and I hope others similarly question your ideas), but the ideas and analysis are always interesting, and worth consideration.
Again, it’s all about information.
Additionally data is always helpful, it’s just a matter of how you use it.
(and Livengood is right, as a writer with access, you’ve got to be able see how Baker would take the title of the post in the way that he did)
I understand your point, and I agree. And I particularly would agree that this kind of discussion doesn’t do much for anyone. And generally speaking, I think we’re pretty good about ignoring petty sniping.
But this really made me angry, and I posted about it, for better or worse. You get almost 100% delicious Mariner content here, but sometimes, we’re only human.
There is no doubt that Baker has very thin skin, but in this case I’m thinking USSMariner is suffering from that same malady.
Just let it go.
Yes yes, see previous comment.
particularly as writers know that they can say nice things, and still have a player decide arbitrarily to stop talking.
Baker used up all his leeway with me months ago. His foolish writings during the whole Adam Jones situation were uninformed, unintelligent and riddled with the most basic of logical fallacies, as well as petty and small-minded.
The U.S.S. Mariner has always given Baker far more credit that I think he has earned.
This is totally back-handed, but in his defense, it must be hard to defend against arguments you can’t really understand. Like creationists arguing against carbon dating.
I say that fairly sincerely, since I am often in the same boat. When someone here uses advanced math to prove a point, I’ll go look it up and see if I can follow it… often I can’t, though. So I concede the point… or at least don’t argue it. Baker is more likely to ignore it, misrepresent it or burn it as a witch.
Unfortunately, Mariner Blogs are at War. Mariner-dom is about to implode.
We can’t turn on each other people: although I think it’s ridiculous that Gee-off has a blog inferiority complex.
The dude is on the Seattle Times Mariners page for Pete’s sake. There are plenty of yahoo’s that read that damn blog anyways.
I still don’t understand why he calls this blog out.
actually, I answered my own question. Gee-off has a blog inferiority complex.
I understand what Baker is doing … he feels like he’s being attacked by an influential site and he’s digging in, which is very consistent with how he acts in his blog. Like I and many others have noted, he has very thin skin and can’t even let criticism go when it comes from some random commentator, let alone a site like this one that gets taken very seriously even by those in the “mainstream press.”
Remember, Dave started the first post in this series with:
I’m going to disagree with Geoff Baker’s most recent blog post in a second, so let me begin with the standard caveat; I like Geoff, he’s a good guy, he’s a good beat writer, and the Times baseball coverage has improved dramatically since he was hired. This isn’t anything personal against him – he just wrote another post that lacks reality, so I’m going to add a little truth to the discussion.
Which is sort of like saying to your significant other, “You know I love you and my life is much better since we got together, so this isn’t anything personal — but you just ate another donut, so I’m going to be honest and say you should probably go on a diet.” People almost always focus on the criticism and not the praise, particularly when the criticism is bluntly applied.
Baker, IMO, does a good job given the type of reporter he is — he provides a lot of information, both in print and in the blog. Even if what Silva thinks is not accurate, it’s useful to know what going through the pitcher’s mind. You just have to know how to filter the information to go with the numbers, and that’s something USSM generally does very well.
Hey instead of blasting a beat writer who reports unimportant things (Silva held his mitt lower tonight!), lets get back to bashing people like Richie and Vidro and the front office…
What makes people think they get to dictate to the authors of this site what is and isn’t worth talking about?
If you don’t think these posts are valuable, don’t read them.
Actually, what struck me about Silva’s comments, as relayed by Geoff, was this:
Shouldn’t a guy who is earning 12 million dollars a year to pitch know his own mechanics and tendencies (good and bad) inside out?
i think a blogger’s timeout is in order, off to your room until you all can learn to get along.
wait, wan’t Paseman joking? I cettainly took it as a joke….
Maybe, but a couple of other people have posted things like “just let it go”, etc.
Heck, if Derek wants to talk about ponies, that’s his prerogative.
You have to put in long hours for little pay over the course of years just for a chance at being a beat reporter paid to follow a pro sports team for a major media outlet. There has to be some serious indignation when people who didn’t tread the same arduous path call into question the quality of your work, and even more so when they don’t tiptoe around your ego when criticizing a specific piece.
Oh yeah, and they’re right and you’re wrong. That’s a real ass-chapper. Forgot that part, that was the point.
“What makes people think they get to dictate to the authors of this site what is and isn’t worth talking about?”
If you’re referring to me, I’m definitely not attempting to “dictate” anything. I am merely making a suggestion. Take that for what it’s worth.
Sorry, I’ll admit this has all put me a little on edge, too; didn’t mean that to sound as harsh as it did.
Still though, Dave and Derek turn the other cheek pretty often, but they’re only human and it’s unreasonable to expect them to do so 100% of the time.
44 – Yah I was joking, I guess everyone is just too riled up now to have a sense of humor…
No worries, Jeff. I can understand why Derek/Dave would be mad. They carefully put together their argument based on logic and sometimes others don’t do the same. I just thought they were preaching to the choir, personally. Anyone who has read their blog for any length of time knows what USSM is about and knows the angle that Geoff Baker takes.
The easy solution is to read the good bits of Baker and ignore any post where it looks like he’s going to try to analyse anything.
Am I the only one who thinks that Baker needs to spend some time in therapy? Anytime someone critiques his point of view, he spins a novel length defense of himself and his point of view.
How are we supposed to know if something’s worth reading until we read it?
How are we supposed to know if something’s worth reading until we read it?
By possessing slightly more foresight than the average chair.
Here’s the thing though: he’s in the PERFECT position to do something really unique, by bringing analysis to the common fan.
As painful as it is to watch an awful team, an awful team gives you lots of opportunities to analyze WHY they’re awful. So the 2008 Mariners could make a great teaching tool for the hoi polloi, and blogging is a great vehicle for analysis of this kind.
I hear there’s a site or two that is pretty successful at it.
Instead, he’s basically doing boilerplate print journalism online, and that’s a mistake.
Graham – I meant in response to 41.
This silly little pissing match isn’t making the world a happier place.
Pissing match. Ummm.. yeah.
I blame this whole ordeal on the front office. If they didn’t build such a horrible team, and didn’t shell out tons of money for a piece of driftwood like Silva, then this wouldn’t be an issue. A good team = happy fans. A ignorant and inept team = unhappy fans.
I’ve been reading this blog for a very long time and I’ve never felt compelled to comment before now. The insight, research and passion in this blog are the reasons I love it and check it every day.
Unfortunately, this back-and-forth battle with Baker is really disheartening. I know its been a bad season (having watched nearly every game this year, I am all too aware) and that this bad season is the result of bad F.O. decisions; but as a fan of USS Mariner, and a lifelong M’s fan, I am disappointed that it’s come to this.
Going after Baker in the first place was disappointing, but continuing it is, well, beneath fans of your knowledge and insight.
Please stop.
Disagree. This whole thing has entertained me most of the work day! That certainly makes my cube a happier place.
Wouldn’t that bars us from commenting on any outside content anywhere, as it would be “going after” someone?
As opposed to DMZ and Dave who just fell ass-backwards into this huge pile of money we like to call U.S.S. Mariner.
Those two slackers know nothing about putting in years of work on something you love without guarantee of financial security. They should put their pina coladas back in their Bentley’s cup holder and show some respect for people who work for a living.
Hey, they didn’t “go after” Baker, they simply pointed out a questionable assertion and offered contradictory evidence. He responded by slamming them publicly, so they called him on it. I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable in that, as long as they don’t let it develop into a feud, which I don’t expect them to do.
And I can understand why Baker would feel threatened by having to compete with such an active, knowledgeable, and widely-respected community of bloggers as we have. I just hope whoever comes in as our new GM considers the existence of USSM and LL a positive thing and an opportunity to be taken advantage of, rather than also seeing them as competition.
Oh man, he knows.
We’ll have to silence him.
Baker uses a straw man to defend his position? I’m shocked. Shocked! Never saw that coming!
No. And as someone who can recognize a “strawman” argument, you should know better than to generalize a specific statement that I made.
My point isn’t that USS Mariner shouldn’t have opinions on outside content. Hell, it’s your blog and you guys have done a terrific job with it thus far. I read it because I’m a big fan. I guess my point is that, in looking to USS Mariner as my best source for M’s knowledge, I would hate to see the focus shift from the Mariners to arguments between this site and another one.
Anyhow, that’s more than two cents on my part. Carry on. Thanks.
Dizzo… the Mariners chose to make the press part of their organizational approach. They compromised the local press almost beyond use. Most of the local media sources are de facto employees of the Mariners’ public relations department.
It is almost impossible to have a full critique of the organization without also criticizing people like Baker.
I think it is exactly what the site does best – critically evaluate the team’s actions and claims – putting nonsense like (sometimes) Baker’s through the wringer of critical thought.
You want to be irritated at someone because you don’t like conflict, then be irritated at Baker.
I don’t think you’ll see the “focus” of this site shift to responding to what Baker says on a daily basis.
There’s lots of other things to talk about, like Vidro hitting cleanup.
I’ll also admit that this is my first year reading USS Mariner. If tiffs have arisen between USSM and other writers before without it turning into a feud, then that’s great. I admit that I don’t know the history of this site before this February.
I’m just a rookie who doesn’t want to see it escalate.
I’m going to guess a little bit here at Dave and DMZ’s motivations; feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, guys.
Part of the reason that there’s the back and forth dialogue between Baker and the authors here is that he shows flashes of being awesome.
His coverage of the winter meetings was really good, and he’s written plenty of other good pieces as well. He isn’t a bad writer, or a dumb guy.
So I think that the authors here are really trying to help Baker step up his game by trying to help him find his way towards being a more educated student of the game and rising above the usual pablum that passes for sports journalism; they see the potential there.
Of course, it’s going to be tough for someone like Baker to admit that they’re not perfect, so I to a certain extent understand why he picks some of the weird fights that he does; but I think that if Dave and Derek thought that Baker couldn’t eventually develop into a seriously awesome asset to baseball journalism, they would simply ignore everything he writes.
You don’t see refutations here of the horrible crap that Jim Moore spews out, for instance.
Great. Thanks for the clarification, Jeff.
Here’s to Riggles stringing together 3 moderately productive hitters in a row in tonight’s lineup!
Is this like the player who has lots of “tools” but few baseball skills?
Geoff Baker–the Juan Encarnacion of sports writing.
No, he has skills. When he’s not trying to respond to other people, whether it’s his own commenters or others in the blog community, he’s a pretty good writer.
All he really needs to do is three things:
1) Recognize that a lot of people on the internet lose any semblance of manners, social skills, or brains the moment they start typing, and react accordingly (seriously, if I was trying to help moderate that blog instead of this one, I’d go insane, and as far as I know he doesn’t get any help);
2) Recognize that right now, he’s not very good at analysis, and be more willing to listen to the people who are and not get so defensive when his mistakes are pointed out;
3) Leverage his access to the players (he’s got a legitimate point in regards to this, although he continually overstates it) while realizing that it’s important to not take everything the players say as if it were gospel.
That’s it.
Sorry Jeff, I was just being snarky. My feelings about Baker’s writing are pretty closely aligned with what John in LA wrote in comment #36.
I think what’s happening is that the poison of this awful season is seeping into everyone’s bloodstream. I think Dave and Derek and Geoff are all great guys who are having a bunch of strangers get overexcited about a minor thing because we’re all in such horrible pain.
Nothing that a few SP Lagers couldn’t straighten right out.
I figured you were being snarky, but I thought it was a good springboard to post what I did.
No harm done.
At least you didn’t call him the Willie Bloomquist of sports writers!
John in LA
I think you misunderstood me, so just to clarify, that post by me wasn’t a defense of Baker’s original “analysis” or subsequent weakly snarkish responses at all, nor was it any type of criticism of USSM. The sports journalism field is extremely competitive (I interned in sports at one of the dailies in HS), they don’t get paid much, and they have to study hard and work hard for a long time, and also do some crappy jobs before they even get a chance at a gig like Baker now enjoys. Once they’ve earned it by climbing the traditional industry ladder (which one could argue is now crumbling, leaving many in traditional print media positions facing uncertain futures), I think they figure they are done taking professional criticism from anyone they don’t call their editor.
Getting pwned by Derek and/or Dave every time he fucks up at analysis is too much for the ego of someone who had to compete hard for that livelihood, I expect…if you interpret my opinion on that as me saying Derek and Dave don’t work hard, or “fell backwards” into USSM’s success, well, then you read me 110% WRONG. I have and will continue to send these guys money because despite the fact they provide this free service on their own time and of their own free will to us, their analysis is lightyears better than anything the “professionals” give us, and in my book that merits financial support from me as an avid consumer of their work, whether passively solicited or not.
In this instance I see someone who is supposed to be a professional responding to legitimate criticism from blogger-hobbyists of his published work in a way that is embarrassing to even read. The bottom threshold of professionalism in this instance would have been to ignore the criticism, whereas responding with a series of weak strawman (even worse) makes him look like the amateur. Baker is/was wrong on Silva in his post, but from a human standpoint, I can understand where his irrational response to the criticism came from. Doesn’t mean I agree with it, either.
And I here I thought people would be excited that Silva pitched a good game…
Sorry to rant like that, but I actually found myself personally offended by the intimation that I insulted USSM. Shame of a fanboy, alas.
Hey, you guys, it could be worse, Steve Kelley could have a blog, not just a column…
smb – I actually agree with your larger point and never thought you were implying that Dave and Derek didn’t work hard.
I guess I was totally ineffective, but I was actually just continuing the sarcasm riff that I assumed (somewhat correctly, I think) you started with “people who didn’t tread the same arduous path” not “tiptoeing around (Baker’s) ego.” I’m sorry if it came across as critical of you, I actually was trying to further your point, not attack it.
Today was the first time I went over to Baker´s blog and first thing that struck me that people there are a lot more agressive and, many times, off topic. Thyt is why I value this blog more. I understand that people get offended by others, I even might understand this post about somebody else ´s bad analysis (even though I don´t think it was ment to be a analysis) but what I don´t get is the reactions of others on Baker´s reaction (which seemed to be pretty natural to me, boy I would spit fire if I would be critised that much
). Guys, and I don´t mean the authors here, stop, please, and go back to real Mariners problems.
I don’t think any GM should view USSM or any other blog site as particularly important at all. It’s just fans reading books and site and then applying people’s work to their team. Anybody could do it if they decided to devote the time to it. I also don’t think they would look down on it though as fan participation is good. Where this site and others goes wrong is somehow believing they are important and that the team should listen to what they say, etc. There’s a pretty good reason why the people who run these sites or the beat writers following them are not in the FO making decisions for the team. So this petty argument between blogging sites on who is smarter is really pretty dumb. Scarcely does a day go by that this site, Geoff’s site, or others is not ripped for this or that.
John in L.A.
Yeah, I can see that now. But I realized after reading your post that I had left that interpretation of my comment open, so I wanted to clarify even though I wasn’t sure you meant to be critical or just tack on to my riff. FWIW, I always enjoy your comments.
Can someone please explain (or link to an explanation of) how the Pitch f/x data is so much more reliable than the oft-disparaged Joe’s Tracer that it refutes conclusively what the pitcher himself has to say?
Thanks.